Cristina: non c'è due senza tre!

Cristina doing her thing in the SRMR - stellar pic by Ozzie Sam. Click for detail!

La Zenato has done it again!

Check out her brilliant newest blog post.
Like her previous posts here and here, it ultimately amounts to nothing more than common sense.

Indeed,
In this context, a simplistic approach that calls for stopping fishing all together is not going to work, is not realistic, and is set up for failure.
At some point the need to sustain food sources for a community clashes with the need for ‘ecological sustainability.’

And thus, this is the lesson I learned in Fiji:
Viable protection needs to come from within the place where sharks are located, it needs to be understood and promoted by the local people, and it needs to be presented in a spirit of cooperation and understanding. My personal opinion is that we need to support education and engage in an open conversation with all parties involved, including ourselves, the visitors.

Could not agree more - with one caveat.
With human development having run roughshod over marine resources, there are now too many people wanting to eat too little fish - and if that is true, both sides of that conflicting dichotomy need to be addressed.

There is only one solution, and that is, to achieve real sustainability.
And if so, it means that we must find ways to allow for those depleted fish stocks to recover; but at the same time, we must finally have the courage to speak out about the ultimate cause of the current problem, i.e. human population growth and the growth of the individual ecological footprints.

That is of course an eminently political challenge.
The clash Cristina mentions is real, especially in those developing countries where eating fish is a necessity and not merely a luxury - and I doubt that any amount of education alone will ever be sufficient to achieve the necessary consensus.

Long story short?
What I'm trying to say is that democracy is great - but when times are tough, democratic processes do not always lead to the best solutions.
Right now, what we need is leadership, and consensus will hopefully come at a later stage when the benefits of those bold measures will become apparent to everybody.
Thankfully for Fiji, it appears that we have just that.

Enjoy Cristina's post.