Environmentalists: Free Trade With Japan Threatens Tuna Stocksff

The Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) will cause more harm on the Philippines’ marine reserves and ecosystems particularly since the trade agreement will allow more exports of marine products such as tuna, an official of an environmentalist group has said.

Japan is one of the biggest markets for fish and the JPEPA could open doors to exploitation of marine resources, as well as agricultural products, minerals and energy, said Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE).

Citing a report by the Japan Tuna Federation Bautista said that Japan has consumes 630,000 tons of tuna per year or 11 pounds per person.

”We fear the shrinking catch qoutas will prompt Japan to move more of its giant fishing fleets to exploit Philippine Seas and further deplete our country’s fish sources and marine ecosystems.”

”When Japanese transnational fishing companies corner the country’s tuna resources through the JPEPA, we are sure that many other forms of resource depletion and marine environmental degradation will follow,” Bautista said.

Bautista also warned that poor fishing villages, particularly in Mindanao would be incapable of buying fish as they compete with bigger 8,000-ton fishing fleets.

”Fish provides 60 percent of food protein source for the average Filipino diet,” Bautista said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed the JPEPA last September 2006 but the agreement has yet to be ratified by the Senate.

Critics of JPEPA have argued that the agreement could open the Philippines to Japanese waste imports, as indicated in Article 29 of the agreement.