General Assembly Resolution #199 “Sustainable Fishing Act” (Category: Environmental; Industry Affected: All Businesses - Strong) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.
Safeguarding sensitive animal populations and ecosystems is a noble endeavor, and GA 199 "Sustainable Fishing Act" represents a valiant effort to safeguard aquatic populations from needing to weather overharvesting. Unfortunately, the target has not itself weathered the passage of time and resolution.
Accordingly, the General Assembly finds as follows:
- The target defines "Overfishing" as "Harvesting a population of an aquatic species in a manner that is impossible for that population to support over time, resulting in an overall decline in the health of the population and imperilling its long term viability." Numerous fishing crews, organizations, or governments operating independently could each be harvesting aquatic populations in a sustainable manner, thereby being compliant with the target even if their collective actions are grossly unsustainable.
- The target exempts "actions taken to control Invasive Species" from its "restrictions on Overfishing." It defines "Invasive Species" as "A species that is not native to a particular ecosystem whose presence has proven disruptive or harmful to the local ecology." The lack of any test or provision specifying what form these actions can take renders the target pitifully weak.
- Exempting any action from the target's overfishing restrictions so long as the action was taken to control invasive species creates a bewildering get-out-of-jail-free card for entities engaged in actions that should be prohibited under any reasonable understanding of the target's intentions. For example, enormously destructive sustained industrial trawling methods that are definitely impossible for local fish populations to support could fall under this exception if they are also undertaken to deplete and therefore control invasive species, regardless of how effective they are at actually controlling invasive species.
- Any action taken with the purpose of invasive species control would fall under the exception regardless of how destructive or damaging it is to native aquatic populations or the environment itself. GA 725 "Reducing Bycatch" wouldn't even apply here if those native populations are caught intentionally.
- The target "[requires] that Member Nations determine and publish the Maximum Sustainable Yield of aquatic species populations inhabiting their national waters and any international waters over which they have an internationally-recognized jurisdictional right." This opens the door to these metrics being based on inaccurate, flawed, or biased data.
- The target does not actually cap fishing at the "Maximum Sustainable Yield." This is a critical flaw that further kneecaps what meager protection the resolution does offer against overfishing and leaves the administrative burden on members to determine and publish "Maximum Sustainable Yield" functionally pointless, especially considering that the definition of "Overfishing" is based on "manner" of harvesting, which is fundamentally incongruent with "Maximum Sustainable Yield" simply meaning "maximum number of individuals."
- This body has since passed better written protections for aquatic species threatened by sapient actions:
- GA 465 "Preventing Species Extinction" convincingly protects "all species and subspecies threatened with extinction by non-natural causes," including aquatic ones, and provides for recovery efforts.
- GA 403 "Trade of Endangered Organisms" more indirectly protects endangered species, including aquatic ones, by banning "the international import and export into or from member nations of all organisms from endangered species or subspecies, and of goods derived wholly or in part from said organisms," with actually reasonable exceptions.
- The aforementioned GA 725 "Reducing Bycatch" cracks down on the potential harm of a specific fishing practice, as does GA 409 "Ocean Noise Reduction."
Emphasizing that the target exempts any actions taken to control invasive species from all of its overfishing restrictions, without bothering to consider the ecological damage that can result from overharvesting invasive species, or how easily this exception can be abused,
Understanding that invasive species themselves may be essential to the integrity of an ecosystem given how intricately interdependent ecosystems can be,
Bewildered that a resolution would decide that its stated mission of safeguarding "the long-term viability of aquatic populations" simply need not apply in such an appallingly clumsy way, and
Considering the target's crippling lack of meaningful protections especially given its redundancy with more recent resolutions to be both inexplicable and inexcusable,
We repeal the fishy target resolution.
