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 …
