Unlike some of the green groups whose statements are sometimes based on dubious observations calculated to shock, WWF Hong Kong has a record of respecting science and working with the authorities. So, when it spends considerable sums to buy newspaper adverts to attack the government, one should take note of what it is saying.
By posing 18 questions, the leading environmental lobby has taken the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) to task for allowing 'local fish stocks to be decimated by overfishing'. It notes that while the department has provided subsidies and assistance to the fishing industry to increase production, it has never used its legal powers to manage the fisheries.
Critically, WWF questions how the department's role in promoting the fishing industry could be reconciled with its role in managing and preserving fisheries, as its director also heads the Fish Marketing Organisation. Its task is to manage the wholesale markets for fish, and provide welfare services for fishermen. In response, the AFCD says it has been trying to strike a balance between the need for marine conservation and fishermen's livelihood.
The questions posed by WWF have raised significant issues about the government's role. The record shows that it has been providing preferential care to the agriculture sector that clearly goes against its avowed philosophy of deferring to market forces and not doing anything to help any industries.
But then farmers and fishermen always get a better deal than workers in other trades, not just in Hong Kong, but all over the world. Because of the perceived importance of maintaining a local source of food supply, most governments do their utmost to protect their agricultural sector. That explains why agricultural subsidies have been a contentious issue on the agenda of the World Trade Organisation.
As the agricultural sector is more susceptible to the vagaries of nature, its practitioners have also tended to win much sympathy when the fruits of their labour are, in the case of Hong Kong, devastated by typhoons, red tides, bird flu and the like. Yet, as overfishing is fast depleting our fish stocks and bird flu is threatening to turn into a fatal human pandemic, it is time to tell our fishermen and farmers to raise their game. Unless fishermen realise their exploitation of the sea is unsustainable, the case for helping them to increase their haul will be weak.
