The Fisheries Economics Research Unit has been working hard to prepare a chapter for the upcoming Green Economy Report, which is part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative. For our contribution to the Report, which is to organize and prepare the fisheries chapter,  we have been in collaboration with more than 50 authors and contributors. The report seeks to demonstrate how ‘green’ investment in various sectors of the economy can be positive contributors to economic growth and employment as well as meeting environmental sustainability goals.

Recently some results stemming…

A short new video posted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on video sharing site YouTube is an excellent quick introduction to fisheries subsidies and why it is an important issue. Watch for appearances by Dr. Sumaila at 1:22, 2:37, and 2:59 in the video below.

Key concepts excerpted from the video are:

“almost every subsidy is potentially harmful”

“Subsidies even contribute to widespread illegal fishing”

“there are still complex issues on the negotiating table and it is crucial these are resolved….and soon.”

See the Fisheries Subsidies blog for more discussion of the…

A recent United Nations food summit in Rome alerts the world that the number of under-fed people is now more than 15% the world’s estimated 6 billion population. It is now believed that the number of under-nourished people around the globe exceeds 1 billion for the first time in history.

Just weeks after preliminary results from the Global Ocean Economics project were made available on this site indicating that overfishing has exacerbated problems of undernourishment (PDF), this news from the UN food summit seems to highlight the importance of addressing…