Today Conservation International and the Pacific Ocean Republic of
Kiribati issued a remarkable press release to formally announce that each had
fulfilled pledges made years ago to contribute $2.5 million each to the trust
fund of the California-size Phoenix Islands Protected Area.
The press release is noteworthy because President Anote Tong of Kiribati had said in
an interview in April that he had no intention of disbursing the money. It also
quotes Tong, who routinely says in public that PIPA was, since it was created in
2008, “off limits to fishing and other extractive uses,” as admitting it is no
such thing: “This brings us a step closer in achieving our ultimate goal for
PIPA: phasing-out commercial fishing over
time.”
While Tong had in the past dismissed assertions that PIPA could be closed
to fishing at no cost to Kiribati, this time he espoused the wholly different
view of some fisheries scientists: that closing PIPA to the tuna-fishing fleets
would in fact create a safe haven where the tuna population would double in a
decade of so. Far from entailing any sacrifice, closing PIPA would make good
business sense by creating a nest egg for the country as the stocks are
gradually depleted in the rest of the Pacific and prices rise. “We are investing
in preserving food security for the world,” Tong said. “In this way, PIPA will
act as an insurance policy for fishing effort more widely in Kiribati and the
region.”
Most remarkable of all is what the press release did not contain: any mention of
Kiribati’s demand for compensation for those (some say non-existent) losses in
revenue from foreign fishing companies if PIPA were to be closed. At the start,
as the book Underwater Eden details, the bill Kiribati presented to CI for
closing all of PIPA was $100 million, eventually reduced to $8.5 million to
close 28%, or a total of $34 million. Even the $8.5 million was said
to be far too much to be raised in today’s financial climate and the press
release suggests – but does not clearly state – that that demand, embedded in
the management plan, has been formally dropped.
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