Source: Australia To
Over-fishing comes to Madang, Papua New Guinea, as local people prepare to resist 10 tuna canneries. "Support indigenous South Pacific coastal people as they are peacefully protesting right now".
In the peaceful South Pacific town of Madang, Papua New Guinea (PNG), the local indigenous people are being inundated with foreign industrial “development†projects -mines, logging and fisheries- for which they have not been properly consulted, have not given their informed consent, and from which they are unlikely to meaningfully benefit. This includes the PNG government's and World Bank/IFC’s plans with China and Japan’s governments to facilitate and invest in the construction of ten new tuna fish canneries and a large central warehouse and worker settlement along Madang’s beautiful coconut lined north coast. A tranquil village culture -living simply but well from small-scale fishing- will be decimated.
According to Asples PNG a US$300 million (K990m) Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) is planned that will greatly increase industrial harvest of Madang, PNG and the Pacific Islands' rich tuna resources. Canneries and dock and storage facilities are to be constructed to service foreign fishing vessels that would dump their tuna catch.
Asples PNG thinks it will bring tens of thousands of unskilled Asians into Papua New Guinea when local unemployment is high. And it most certainly will lead to fishery depletion and collapse. Unless this expansion of an already socially and ecologically failed industrial tuna industry is resisted, overfishing and piracy will destroy PNG and most of the world's remaining tuna and other fisheries.