F R O M   T H E   C R O W E ’ S   N E S T

The Fight for the Public’s Rights



The regional ocean policy plan has been getting a lot of space on this page, and practically nowhere else in the media, in the last four years. Soon with the crossing of last Ts a final plan will go to the White House for approval. The determined, outspoken and intelligent wrestling of a few participants in the Northeast Regional Planning Body (NRPB) process to get ecosystem based management (EBM) on the ocean plan table appears to have paid off. Paid off in that it was talked about enough that it will be difficult for the nay-sayers to pretend they were never apprised of the public’s concern for and interest in establishing ecosystem based ocean management as an important component of our larger National Ocean Policy. (See Opinion, “Appreciation, Suggestions and the Details,” P. 7, Fishermen’s Voice, 9/2016)

The significance of embedding EBM into a national ocean policy is at least three-fold. First, it holds the possibility that we, as a species, may treat the ocean better than we have treated the land and air. In a 9/2016 Atlantic, article, “Better Than Nature,” Nathaniel Rich wrote: “We rarely acknowledge the fact that, through industrial agricultural practices, resource extraction, and atmospheric monkeying, we have landscaped the entire world to suit our needs. Every square inch of land on Earth has been altered by our presence.” The negative effects of these alterations are reported daily.

Second, our knowledge of the deep ocean is near zero today compared to what we know of the land. An article in the Guardian in mid-September 2016 noted that the deep ocean makes up 95% of habitable Earth, yet only point-zero-zero-zero-one percent has been explored.

Third, and most important, the development of the Northeast Regional Ocean Plan was underwritten not by the U.S. Congress, which is the official designated steward for this public resource, but corporate foundation tax deferred funding. While the foundation-funded facilitators of the planning body process referred to it as a public-private process, the foundation role is neither benign nor without an agenda. It might just as easily be described as private money shaping the use of public resources for private profit. In the late 20th century the political re-assignment of public rights was labeled new liberalism. In the late 19th century similar proponents were simply robber barons.

Those NRPB participants, on the foundation dime or their own dime, who got the public’s collective EBM foot in the door, did well for all of us, but it is only the beginning of the fight for the public’s rights, including fishing.