Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 30 posts

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#21

Post by jcranmer »

matt4077 wrote: post #8
beambot wrote: post #6

How is it enforced, and what are the penalties?

It's enforced by fishing in the high artic being pretty conspicuous. Regarding penalties: With ratification, such treaties become law. There are no penalties specified, but courts are empowered to enforce them by whatever means they deem effective. Environmental groups, for example, could sue the US, in US courts. Beyond that, international cooperation doesn't rely on penalties or similar sanction mechanisms as much…

Trump has not pulled the US out of any treaties. Treaties, as you say, become law upon ratification; therefore, it requires an act of Congress to repeal them. Now, the Paris climate agreement is an "executive agreement" which does not require ratification of the Senate, and so therefore can be unilaterally withdrawn by the President.

Nor did the US pull out of the Iran deal. Congress attached a rider to the ratification requiring the president to periodically certify Iran's commitment to the deal to continue with the unwinding of sanctions. Trump declined to so certify Iran, but that doesn't affect the treaty in any legal sense. (It certainly does affect the foreign politics of the situation, but at this point it seems clear that the world knows to ignore Trump and just flatter him into thinking he's important and useful).

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#22

Post by JohnTHaller »

sytelus wrote: post #12
aleyan wrote: post #2

The author wrote twelve paragraphs, yet didn't care to mention explicitly which nine nations reached a deal. The answer according to NY Times[1] is the following: > To take effect, the agreement on a high-latitude fishing ban must be signed by all the countries involved: the United States, Norway, Denmark, Canada and Russia, which all have Arctic shorelines; and South Korea, China, Japan, the European Union and Icela…

Current tax bill in US is opening up arctic to explore for oil. So don't have too much hope for this...

"tax" bill

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#23

Post by microcolonel »

dalbasal wrote: post #9

Here is the question that interests me... For over 100 years, commercial fishing has been an issue. Atlantic cod was the canonical tragedy of the commons, with early multinational agreements that attempted to fix it. They're still shaky. On land, we hit a point a long time ago. American Bison are a very illustrative example. Guns and railroads could harvest the whole population in a few seasons. Factory conveyor belt…

American Bison are an example which sheds light on the problem. The Bison in the commons were exploited to near extinction, but the Bison on private ranchland are plentiful today.

The problem is not commercial fishing or commercial hunting, the problem is a lack of ownership. If you have no means to prevent others from overexploiting a resource, then you have no incentive to protect it; If you don't own the resource and nobody will stop anyone from exploiting it, your best move is to join in exploiting it at whatever rate humanly possible.

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#24

Post by matt4077 »

jcranmer wrote: post #21
matt4077 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's enforced by fishing in the high artic being pretty conspicuous. Regarding penalties: With ratification, such treaties become law. There are no penalties specified, but courts are empowered to enforce them by whatever means they deem effective. Environmental groups, for example, could sue the US, in US courts. Beyond that, international cooperation doesn't rely on penalties or similar sanction mechanisms as much…

Trump has not pulled the US out of any treaties. Treaties, as you say, become law upon ratification; therefore, it requires an act of Congress to repeal them. Now, the Paris climate agreement is an "executive agreement" which does not require ratification of the Senate, and so therefore can be unilaterally withdrawn by the President. Nor did the US pull out of the Iran deal. Congress attached a rider to the ratificat…

If you read the post more carefully, specifically the possibility of the US pulling out of the Iran Deal: Not only would it legitimately [...], you'll notice that I never claim Trump pulling out of any treaties– possibility and would indicate the conditionality here. Arguably, the effects I mentioned could also result just from high-level politicians talking about the possibility of unilaterally withdrawing from such deals.

I also didn't use the word 'treaty' anywhere near my mention of Trump, nor did I mention the Paris agreement.

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#25

Post by semi-extrinsic »

aleyan wrote: post #2

The author wrote twelve paragraphs, yet didn't care to mention explicitly which nine nations reached a deal. The answer according to NY Times[1] is the following: > To take effect, the agreement on a high-latitude fishing ban must be signed by all the countries involved: the United States, Norway, Denmark, Canada and Russia, which all have Arctic shorelines; and South Korea, China, Japan, the European Union and Icela…

It can get even weirder. Take the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling which introduced a moratorium on whaling. Norway has signed and ratified the convention, but (per Wikipedia)

"Norway maintains an objection to paragraph 10(e) of the convention (the section referring to the 1986 moratorium). Therefore, that provision is not binding upon Norway and the 1986 IWC global moratorium does not apply to it."

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#27

Post by BurningFrog »

dalbasal wrote: post #9

Here is the question that interests me... For over 100 years, commercial fishing has been an issue. Atlantic cod was the canonical tragedy of the commons, with early multinational agreements that attempted to fix it. They're still shaky. On land, we hit a point a long time ago. American Bison are a very illustrative example. Guns and railroads could harvest the whole population in a few seasons. Factory conveyor belt…

This tragedy of the commons can be solved on the oceans as we've solved it on land, by property rights.

Iceland and New Zealand have decent systems in place, and have a healthy sustainable populations that they harvest.

The basic idea is that if you own the fishing rights to a certain area, it is profitable to let the population grow big before you harvest it. Thus greed motivates conservation.

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#28

Post by wdr1 »

aleyan wrote: post #2

The author wrote twelve paragraphs, yet didn't care to mention explicitly which nine nations reached a deal. The answer according to NY Times[1] is the following: > To take effect, the agreement on a high-latitude fishing ban must be signed by all the countries involved: the United States, Norway, Denmark, Canada and Russia, which all have Arctic shorelines; and South Korea, China, Japan, the European Union and Icela…

> Unfortunately I have to fault your reporting too. Treaties don't take effect domestically until they are ratified by the involved countries legislatures, not are merely signed.

Not always.

Obama didn't take the Paris climate agreement to Congress. I.e., it was never ratified, yet the general sentiment was the US had joined, complied during the Obama administration, and likely would have would under a Clinton administration.

And there were a lot of headlines about the US "leaving" the agreement under Trump, which requires the US having been in.

Of course, the obvious downside to not being ratified is exactly what happened under Trump. That the President can make a unilateral decision to leave the agreement.

That said, if Trump agreed to do this, I imagine there's a good chance it follows through under his administration. (Although with Trump you never know.) And I imagine any subsequent Democratic administration follows through as well.

Re: Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years

#29

Post by belorn »

dalbasal wrote: post #9

Here is the question that interests me... For over 100 years, commercial fishing has been an issue. Atlantic cod was the canonical tragedy of the commons, with early multinational agreements that attempted to fix it. They're still shaky. On land, we hit a point a long time ago. American Bison are a very illustrative example. Guns and railroads could harvest the whole population in a few seasons. Factory conveyor belt…

The major difference between the prairies and the oceans is that we humans eat practically every animal the size of a rabbit or bigger, while when it come to sea creatures people are very picky. This result is a very wasteful fishing, especially when looking at historical methods (which hasn't completely stopped yet).

Imagine if people went hunting by setting fire to the forest, only interested in the meat a handful of species. In the wake of destruction a massive desert forms with barely any life left. Do this on a global scale for a few decades, and you have the kind of fishing we had up to the early 2000. We have hopefully outgrown that kind of fishing.

Post reply on HN