The issue of illegal fishing and piracy

After reading about and discussing Somali pirates, I have come to the conclusion that to claim they are simply using illegal overfishing and waste-dumping as an excuse to loot and raid other ships is to be ignorant of their history and narrow-minded about human nature and interaction.

As highlighted in Mohamed Abshir Waldo’s article, illegal fishing and waste-dumping has gone on in Somali waters for around two decades now. Most of the participating countries are from the EU, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.  From the sounds of it, they have been taking advantage of the fact that Somalia has little to no government and certainly no power to authorize what is happening in their territorial waters. Stig Jarle Hansen points out that most of the reported hijackings conducted by pirates are not of fishing boats, but does not pay enough attention to the idea that perhaps, because the fishing boats are there illegally, those particular hijackings are not being reported. This would bring unwanted attention to the illegal fishing industry that many modern, powerful countries are a part of. And perhaps tankers are targeted not only because they are slow-moving but also because they dump the most waste?

A few semesters ago, in a class regarding immigration policy, we learned about humans and the concept of “the other.” We were talking about in the context of citizenship and how it creates a clear definition of outsiders, or others, but I believe it can be used in this context as well. The Somali pirates may not see a British tanker as different from a Yemen fishing boat, or a dhow from a cargo ship… At this point in time, after exploitation of their waters and vulnerability, after being treated violently and aggressively by outsiders (Waldo), perhaps the Somali pirates view us as all the same – the “Other” that invade what they see as theirs, treat it badly, take what is not ours, and leave nothing but damaged supplies behind.

I do not think Somali pirates claim environmentalism in the same way that other groups do. I do not think they care about the future of the fish populations in the sense of restoring ecosystems, keeping species alive and leaving no trace of human infringement. I believe it is much more short-term than that. They simply know that high levels of ship traffic, high levels of waste-dumping and high levels of fishing lead to less fish in the water than if there were low levels of all of this. One does not have to be a scientist to observe what happens over time in an environment they are in every day. They also know enough about borders, sovereignty, and states’ rights to feel that the water surrounding Somalia is theirs, but that they do not have a government to defend it for them. This gives them the sense that outsiders are infringing upon their right to survive – their right to use their own water how they need to without the problems that other foreigners bring with them.

Of course, with any movement, there are people with ulterior motives. What was originally a fight to protect their own waters through piracy could have expanded to be motivated by things like money. I am sure there are Somali pirates who do not care about the fishes or quality of their water and simply want money to go and buy food onshore or to purchase things like a new boat or house. However, what is important is that we as an outside society realize that the core of the piracy movement is driven by survival. Regardless of if they want money, fish, clean water, or weapons, these men are trying to survive and see foreigners as either a threat to their survival that need to be dealt with or a way of getting enough resources (money) to survive until the next day. To debate and argue about whether or not illegal fishing is what directly causes piracy is a waste of time. Is there nothing to lose from stopping illegal fishing other than profits for the countries partaking? To stop illegal fishing could possibly cause a large decline in Somali piracy, and if it didn’t at least it would remove that as an excuse for the Somali pirates and the conversation regarding how to stop it could continue.

The real problem with pirates

For years now I’ve heard about the Somali pirates. In my younger years I imagined this pirates somewhat like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, but since learning more I’ve realized that description does not quite fit.

The Q & A article “We Just Want the Money” made me hesitate on disregarding the Somali’s tactics in protecting their waters. There were a couple things in the article that made me feel this way:

1.       The men claim they are not going to sell the weapons to anyone in Somalia. Call me naive but I truly believe this is true. When looking at this failed state, it seems ludicrous that one would want to induce more pain and suffering, which is what these weapons would do.

2.       The men who are taking over these ships are trying to protect themselves from what they see as the ultimate enemy: hunger. To us in the developed world these drastic measures do not make sense – food is all around us.

However, there are still some red flags to what the Somali’s are doing. For one, they are pocketing the cash, so the argument that they are in the coast guard does not stand. As I mentioned in class, it makes me nervous that these men are raiding ships for their personal gain. Although I do not have a good suggestion for how to institutionalize the money gain so that more Somali’s can benefit, it should not be solely for those who raid ships. Another concern I have is the fact that the Somali’s have extended their reach beyond the waters just located off-shore. This looks like more than simply protecting their waters. A final concern I have is the claim that this practice is to protect the waters from overfishing and dumping. This seems like a poorly disguised cover story for the true purpose of collecting money. Environmental protection seems like too big of a developmental jump for these men to be taking. After a state has failed, the people focus on the most basic needs for survival (food, water, procreation etc.) Environmental protection is not on this list of needs. Many countries that are still in the developing stages do not think about how their actions are affecting their environment – they cannot afford to do so. It seems counter to what I’ve learned in many of my classes for the environment to be top on the list of priorities for these people.

That leads me to the question of why cover their tracks with the claim of environmentalism. It is so people like us (and those much more qualified) can argue whether this claim has actual bearing. The time we waste debating whether environmental reasons are why the Somali’s are attacking other ships is preventing us from looking deeper into the issue.

I believe that the Somali pirates are not in the water to be a coast guard, or protect the environmental state of things or even to sell weapons in Somalia. I believe that the pirates are simply trying to survive and the way they have found to do this is through this measure. This way of protecting themselves does not take the form we (as the West) would like, but it is what the Somali’s have decided is the only way to reach their goals.

The true issue of the Somali piracy is one that highlights the challenges we will continue to face in a world where people do not have the nutrients they need to survive. Instead of admonishing the pirates for attacking ships, or even praising them for being the coast guard (as some villagers do) we must help these people. We must encourage education so that the people will be able to have higher food yields and feed more people. We must help the Somali’s to create a government that answers to the people and that institutionalizes a way to distribute food and resources properly.

Piracy is not the main issue in the problem of Somali piracy – it is only the surface level. By truly looking into what is happening to these people it is necessary for us to stop focusing on what is going on in the waters, and focus more on what can happen on land so piracy is no longer a necessary evil. 

"Carbon Democracy": Oil Wealth and its Impacts on Power and Democracy

In his paper “Carbon Democracy,” Timothy Mitchell argues that oil and other widely-used sources of energy give power to countries that have abundant supplies of these resources. He opens his paper by asserting that “Fossil fuels helped create both the possibility of modern democracy and its limits” (1). He also believes that having abundant supplies of oil makes a country less democratic, as demonstrated by the countries of the Middle East, whose governmental stability has been tenuous at best over the last several decades. Mitchell believes that oil creates power because it can be used to generate revenues and wealth for a country. Because money equals power, countries that produce vast amounts of oil often see greater power in the international arena. Mitchell argues that countries that produce large amounts of oil are often less democratic because this wealth can be used to buy support for political campaigns, ward off protests and rebellion, and generate price subsidies. I would like to refute both of Mitchell’s arguments on oil: that oil both creates power and represses democracy.

There are numerous examples of countries that produce vast amounts of oil but are not all that powerful. While the amount of oil wealth generated by countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates is quite large, these countries do not hold nearly as much power in the international arena as the Western democracies of the world. While the United States is a good example of a country with lots of oil wealth and lots of power, countries that produce hardly any oil at all still hold lots of power in international affairs. The developed countries of Western Europe, including France, Spain, and Germany do not produce their own oil, yet they still remain among the world’s major powers. Why is this? Perhaps it is due to the strong indicators of democracy present in these countries. In addition, these countries are powerful simply because they have strong economies and generate lots of wealth. We can see this when we compare them to the oil-producing countries of the Middle East, whose GDPs per capita are much lower.

Furthermore, Mitchell argues that vast amounts of oil repress democracy because of the potential for oil wealth to create corruption, especially in politically tenuous countries such as those of the Middle East. While this may be true in that particular region of the world, it is far from true in countries such as the US, Venezuela, and Brazil, who all hold large amounts of oil wealth yet are still flourishing, functioning democracies. While Mitchell believes that oil acts as a barrier to democracy—as it certainly does in some states—it is still an important economic component of the world’s more powerful countries. Mitchell states that “The leading industrialized countries are also oil states. Without the energy they derive from oil their current forms of political and economic life would not exist. Their citizens have developed ways of eating, travelling, housing themselves and consuming other goods and services that require very large amounts of energy from oil and other fossil fuels” (6). While Mitchell believes that oil is harmful to democracy, he also recognizes that it is a huge aspect of people’s lives in developed countries. In my opinion, this takes away from the strength of his argument because he states that oil is harmful to democracy, but then states that the world’s more powerful countries—all of whom are democracies—are highly dependent on oil. “Countries that depend upon petroleum resources for a large part of their earnings from exports tend to be less democratic” (1), Mitchell states in the opening of his paper. I disagree with this statement because the democracies of Western Europe rely solely upon exports in order to obtain oil, yet are far from “less democratic.”

What can we do about this problem? In my opinion, the only solution is to move away from oil as quickly as possible. While oil dependency is hardly linked to power dynamics, the potential for its production to create conflict in politically corrupt areas of the world is enough to promote action. In order to avoid these conflicts, we must attempt to pursue clean, renewable sources of energy further so that environmental degradation is limited and conflict is avoided. This may be difficult, however, especially in areas of the world that are located near vast oil reserves, making oil the preferred source of energy. 

Somalia as a Failed State

As we have seen and read about in class, the nature of piracy off the coast of Somalia is somewhat controversial. The articles by Gettleman, Waldo, and Bueger eschew the idea that the Somali pirates are merely motivated by profit and introduce the narrative of the Somali pirates as a type of coast guard, protecting the waters from illegal fishing. Hansen acknowledges this narrative as well, while still identifying greed as the primary motivation for Somali pirates.

However, one point that is not argued is Somalia’s status as a “failed state.” A failed state is one which can no longer carry out basic governmental functions such as education or security (Global Policy Forum). The Fund for Peace, a nonprofit which studies and indexes weak and failing states, has proposed a few guidelines to better identify a failed or failing states. A failed state can be characterized by

·         “loss of physical control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein,

·         erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions,

·         an inability to provide reasonable public services, and

·         an inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.” ("Index FAQ").

The Fund for Peace bases its Failed State Index (FSI) on twelve separate measures and ranks those measures out of ten, resulting in a ranking score out of 120. The Fund’s twelve measures for its Failed State Index are broken down into three subcategories of social, economic, and political and military indicators. In 2013 Somalia had a score over 9.0 for ten of the twelve categories, and Somalia has been number one on the Fund for Peace’s FSI for the last five years (2009-2013).

I found the breakdown of indicators used by the Fund for Peace interesting. The Fund’s indicators focus most strongly on political and military indicators, which comprise six of the twelve measures. I wanted to know if the Fund for Peace acknowledged any environmental reasons for Somalia’s status as a failed state. What I found was that although they are not explicitly identified as “environmental” factors, the Fund does include some environmental indicators in its twelve measures for the FSI.

As mentioned above, the Fund divides its twelve FSI measures into subcategories. Environmental factors do not comprise their own category, but several environmental factors are included under other categories. The social indicators category includes the measures “Mounting Demographic Pressures”, “Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally Displaced Persons”, and “Chronic and Sustained Human Flight.” These all sound very similar to the phenomenon Homer-Dixon termed “ecological marginalization.” Ecological marginalization describes the process whereby people living in resource poor areas move into other resource poor areas, which puts increased strain on the resources and causes them to dry up more quickly. Although chronic and mass movement of people within a state can be caused for different reasons than scarcity, these factors do seem to connect well to the idea of ecological marginalization.

It was gratifying to identify some environmental factors in the FSI’s measures. Like the articles by Gettleman, Waldo, and Bueger, which focused on concerns of illegal fishing, the FSI measures represent an environmental take on what can cause a country to become or continue to be identified as a failed state. I think it would be beneficial and quite interesting for political scientists interested in the environment to include a few explicitly environmental measures as part of the FSI. To start, the Fund for Peace could add a measure for drastic changes in level of rainfall, which we previously learned can be linked to increases in violence (Hendrix & Salehyan). By adding this or other environmental metrics, the Fund for Peace could get a fuller picture of what creates and sustains a failed state like Somalia.

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References


"Failed States Index FAQ." Failed States Index FAQ. The Fund for Peace, n.d. Web. 02 May                    2014.

"The Failed States Index 2013." The Fund for Peace. The Fund for Peace, n.d. Web. 01 May                    2014.


"Global Policy Forum." Failed States. Global Policy Forum, n.d. Web. 01 May 2014.

Hendrix, C.S, and I Salehyan. "Climate Change, Rainfall, and Social Conflict in Africa."Journal of 


Peace Research. 49.1 (2012): 35-50. Print.