dolphin-free rule

Vanuatu hit by dolphin-free rule

WHILE America’s love affair with the dolphin has generally been helpful to Pacific Island nations, pushing tuna fishing into the Western Pacific which earns fees for those nations, Vanuatu was the loser in a recent US decision regarding two of its tunaboats.

US law discourages tunaboats from following their traditional practice in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, that of locating dolphin on the surface of the sea, and then seining tuna beneath them. The purse seiners typically kill dolphin in this process, though recently industry efforts have reduced the number of kills.

Late in March, Washington decided that the two Vanuatu-owned fishing boats, on the Pacific Coast of South America and working the Eastern Trop ical Pacific, could no longer sell their catch in the American market, because the Vanuatu boats endangered the dolphin. It was a follow-up to a similar decision, taken for similar reasons, aimed at the much larger Mexico-based tuna fleet which works the same waters.

The decision is more likely to have long-term adverse impacts on Vanuatu than short-term ones. Currently, the major US tuna packers refuse to buy tuna caught “on dolphin” as part of their

enviromentally-influenced marketing

campaign selling only “dolphin safe” tuna, so the catch of the Vanautu boats was not headed to the US anyway.

In the future, however, things could get more serious. The ban on direct

imports of dolphin-endangered tuna

from Vanuatu is just the first step in the process. The second, automatic step takes place 90 days later (it is scheduled for late

June); this is the ban on all tuna US imports from intermediary countries that buy and process tuna from Vanuatu. If Vanuatu, for example, is selling tuna to Thailand, for example all imports of Thai tuna would be terminated, or more likely Thailand’s packing houses would stop buying tuna from Vanuatu. The third and final step, not an automatic one, could come six months later or in late September at the earliest. This would be a total US ban on any fish products from Vanuatu.

Vanuatu has a cameo role in this controversy; the principal players are the United States and Mexico. American enviromentalists are pressing the reluc tant Bush Administration to take the pro dolphin position while many voices in Mexico are complaining about American “economic imperialism.” It is a classic First World-Third World struggle over an enviromental issue. The whole squabble threatens to torpedo free trade talks between the two North American

neighbours.

By David North, Washington

Niue aid cut New Zealand is cutting its annual aid to Niue by NZ$5OO,OOO, Foreign Affairs Minister Don McKinnon said last month. Niue, a self-governing New Zealand dependency, currently receives NZ$lO million in aid each year. “The clear message is that every New Zealand dollar has to be spent as effectively and efficiently as possible,” McKinnon said.

The cut will take effect in the next financial year which begins in July. □ Another China visit Fiji President Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau visited china last month from the 22nd to the 29th. He was invited by his Chinese

counterpart Yang Shangkun.

China is sparing no effort to develop relations with the small countries of the Pacific, where the rival nationalist gov ernment in Taiwan has important links.

The Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Rabbie Namaliu, visited there earlier last month. In March, the President of the Marshall Islands, Amata Kabua, visited Beijing. □ Kiribati Minister dies A senior Kiribati Cabinet Minister Babera Kirata died at his home here overnight after complaining of chest pains. He was 53. He had been Home Affairs and Decentralisation Minister.

His death came less than a month before parliamentary elections on May 8.

Kirata had been an MP for the island of Onotoa since 1978. During his parlia mentary career he held several minis

terial portfolios including communica

tions, works, natural resources develop ment and energy. He is survived by his wife and three children.

Kirata was among several ministers considered as possible successors to current head of state leremia Tabai who is to step down at presidential elections due in mid-June. □ Oceans under probe UNESCO is studying the oceans to aid climate forecasts and save billions of dollars in damage from weather disasters.

Satellites, ships and buoys will gather data t>n the link between seas and freak weather conditions.

By early next century, GOOS could be providing real-time computer data in tended to give early warning of such phenomena as the shifting El Nino current in the Pacific Ocean. El Nino, which sends warm water into the Eastern Pacific every few years, upsets weather patterns over half the world. □