Global Fisheries and Local Ecosystems

Paul Greenberg had an interesting article in The New York Times earlier this week, on the state of American and global fisheries.  (I also discussed his excellent Four Fish book in a previous post.)  His take-home point was that today's global fisheries � with shrimp and many other kinds of fish shipped around the world � is a big reason why the United States (and, one assumes, other countries) have failed to take care of their local fish stocks.  Global markets mask local signals: when any grocery store displays fish from all the world's oceans, it's easy to ignore the sad state of local fisheries.

When New Yorkers can buy fish from anywhere in the world, they can easily forget that their choices don't include local oysters, even though their city was once the world's oyster capital.

It's a valuable argument, that's worth expanding.  First, there's nothing specific to fish going on here.  Global markets enable people to lose contact with the conditions in which all sorts of commodities are produced � whether it's sweatshops where clothes are made, or food produced using excessive pesticides, exploited workers, or mistreated livestock.  These and other cases suggest that, given their consequences, our decisions as consumers can no longer only be matters of personal choice.

And second, the fact that distance impedes the flow of information between producers and consumers is, of course, a big reason why many find local food attractive.  It has also been a factor motivating certification programs, like that for fisheries set up by the Marine Stewardship Council: these are, in effect, communication programs, aimed at conveying information regarding the conditions in which the fish have been produced.

Greenberg, though, adds an interesting twist to this argument about distance: that global markets not only impede information from distant places, but from ecosystems closer to home.  And that kind of indirect impact is not something that any certification program could account for � a fact that points up the limits of using consumer choices to achieve sustainability.