After the conclusion of the United Nations Ocean Conference, held from 9 to 13 June, Paris, France-based climate and ocean nonprofit BLOOM announced it was pursuing legal action against the French government, accusing it of making false claims at the conference about expanding protections in the nation’s waters against bottom trawling.
BLOOM said the legal action aims to highlight how the French government used the conference as a “greenwashing operation,” as well as to spur action to stop and repair ongoing and past damage from bottom trawling in French metropolitan waters.
“‘Welcome to hell’ is the message that [French President] Emmanuel Macron sent to young people … when he announced his refusal to take action to protect wildlife, the climate, and natural ecosystems,” BLOOM Executive Director Claire Nouvian said. “It doesn’t matter that protecting them has been identified as the second most effective lever in the fight against climate change. The fact that they are waging a campaign of harassment, terror, threats and aggression against BLOOM and myself does not change the president’s allegiances [toward] the lobbies that are destroying the world and democracy. In front of the whole world, Macron is showing that he has been reduced to a puppet serving industrial interests, providing a little ceremonial decorum. Who would have predicted that the president would fall so low? At a time when the world needs politicians who are more courageous and honest than ever to maintain the integrity of the climate, ecosystems and, therefore, civilization, we are witnessing the collapse of politics. It is a curse.”
According to BLOOM, on 7 June, Macron announced France would reveal important measures concerning marine protected areas and bans on bottom trawling and present those measures at the UN Ocean Conference. The following day, France’s Ministry for Ecological Transition released the nation’s official plans to expand protections against bottom trawling from 0.1 percent of France’s metropolitan waters to 4 percent by 2026.
That same day, BLOOM discovered that the supposed increase in protections consisted largely of zones where bottom trawling had already been banned. With a few exceptions, BLOOM claims the areas newly labeled as “highly protected” have, in fact, been closed to bottom trawling since January 2017 – a ban which itself followed a seven-year campaign by BLOOM and other partners to secure, according to the nonprofit.
In addition to the legal action, BLOOM is also calling for the resignation of France Minister of Ecological Transition, Biodiversity, Forests, Sea, and Fisheries Agnés Pannier-Runacher.
In response to the criticism, Macron stated that France’s industrial fishing is “less predatory” compared to other nations, noting it has only one industrial fishing vessel and that most of its fleet consists of boats under 12 meters in length, with the remainder between 12 and 25 meters.
However, BLOOM countered that vessels over 25 meters still comprise nearly 4 percent of the French fleet and often engage in allegedly destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling, pelagic trawling, demersal seining, and purse seining. The organization emphasized that Macron’s protection of industrial fishing interests, among other issues, poses a serious threat to artisanal fisheries in the English Channel, where French small-scale fishermen already continue to call on the government to protect their trades and livelihoods.
In contrast to France’s approach, BLOOM said that other nations made more concrete commitments during the conference.
Samoa, for example, announced the establishment of nine new marine protected areas, achieving global goals to protect 30 percent of marine areas by 2030. Elsewhere, the United Kingdom declared a ban on bottom trawling in half of its marine protected areas. Polynesia announced the creation of a new marine protected area spanning over 5 million square kilometers, with 900,000 of those kilometers designated as strict no-fishing zones.
According to BLOOM, France has used that announcement from French Polynesia to claim that national marine protection has increased from 4 percent to 14 percent. However, BLOOM argues that this figure is misleading, as mainland France only has 0.1 percent of marine waters effectively protected.
Therefore, BLOOM claims that the French government used the conference to present misleading progress on marine protection.
By announcing an increase in bottom trawling bans that largely apply to areas already protected and by using conservation achievements in overseas territories like French Polynesia to inflate national figures, BLOOM argues that the government has diverted attention from the lack of meaningful protection in mainland France. The nonprofit further claims that these actions reflect a broader alignment with industrial fishing interests at the expense of small-scale fishers and marine biodiversity.
“There are some points where we agree with the NGOs and scientific community – on the need for a strengthening of the level of protection in some marine protected areas – but we don’t focus only on bottom trawling,” Macron’s office said in response to criticism, per The Guardian.
