African fishing communities under threat as blue economy grows, experts warn
The world’s poorest continent hosts a blue economy estimated at $1-trillion but loses $42bn a year to illegal fishing and logging of mangroves along the coast
Coastal African fishing communities are at greater risk of extinction as countries eye look to tourism, industrial fishing and exploration revenue to launch their “blue economies”, according to UN experts and activists. The continent’s 38 coastal and island states have in recent years moved to tap ocean resources through commercial fishing, marine tourism and sea-bed mining, said the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca). “There is a great risk and a great danger that those communities will be marginalised,” said Joseph Zelasney, a fishery officer at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). “The resources that they depend on will be decimated,” he said on Monday at a side event at the Blue Economy Conference organised by Kenya, Canada and Japan in Nairobi. The world’s poorest continent hosts a blue economy estimated at $1-trillion but loses $42bn a year to illegal fishing and logging of mangroves along the coast, according to Uneca estimates. Seismic waves generated by ...
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