Catherine A. Novelli, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment for 2-1/2 years, sat down with Honolulu Star-Advertiser editorial writer Vicki Viotti upon her arrival for the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which concluded this weekend. Photographer Jamm Aquino followed Novelli to one of her meetings — an exchange with students from Punahou School. Educating the next generation of environmentalists was a goal of the summit, as well as of the Our Ocean conference, which convenes Thursday in Washington, D.C. (see Page E5).
One takeaway from policies the Obama administration pursues: Environmental and economic interests have to balance for either to survive.
QUESTION: Some critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are afraid sovereign nations won’t be able to protect the environment through this cooperative arrangement. Could you address that?
ANSWER: With respect to the TPP and the environment … the TPP is a very comprehensive agreement. It looks at trading rules, rules of investment, rules of standard-setting, rules of telecommunications and the internet, and sort of comprehensively looking at how we can make our economic activity among those countries more intertwined, so that the barriers that can create inefficiency can be removed.
At the same time the TPP recognizes that we want to make sure that our companies and our workers are operating on a level playing field with everyone else. That is why we include labor and environment provisions in the TPP.
With respect to environment, there are provisions like saying everybody has to abide by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) … that governs animal conservation and fish conservation.
And what is unique is that if you don’t actually abide by these obligations that you’re undertaking, then you can be subject to binding dispute settlements. And a lot of the international environmental conventions don’t necessarily have dispute settlement. You sign an obligation, but then if you don’t live up to it, people can call you on the carpet, but there’s not something tangible.
Q: There’s no “stick”?
A: Correct. So, the United States is living up to its obligations, so with respect to us, this is not a threat. … But a number of other countries aren’t, so we’re able to actually raise the bar.
One of the other things that is directly a nexus between environment and trade is the question of subsidies. And one of the things that we’re trying to address is illegal fishing, and unregulated fishing. How do we make sure that the bodies that are in place that have decided how to manage fish stocks around the world so that they’ll be there for the next generations, how do we make sure that there aren’t disincentives put in place? …
Essentially, if you subsidize your fishing, then the likelihood that you’re going to be overfishing is way greater.
One of the innovations in the TPP is to get everybody to agree that they will not subsidize their fishing. That is a huge thing. It’s a huge thing because of this problem of overfishing. And right now, today, we have about 30 percent of the fish stocks in the world that are overfished. That’s a huge problem.
We’ve got over 3 billion people who are relying on fish as their major source of protein. So if we don’t manage this resource, which is a resource for us to use, it’s not just that fish are pretty and we like to look at them, if we don’t manage that properly it’s not going to be there for others.
So there’s a real meshing of that. There’s nothing in the TPP that would prevent us from taking legitimate environmental measures that we are taking. In fact, it’s very clear in the TPP that a country may take legitimate environmental measures.
I think that there has been a lot of talk about this but it’s not really accurate.
Q: So, you think there is some misunderstanding about this?
A: I think there is. And I would also say this has arisen also in the context of investment, what’s called “investor stake dispute settlement.” And there have been some who have said, “Well, this would allow an investor to sue the United States government for an environmental measure, because it’s preventing me from doing what I want to do.”
TPP makes very clear that public health and safety, environment, these are areas that governments may regulate in, they should not be areas of dispute settlement, unless you are, for example, discriminating. Saying, “You foreign countries operating in the U.S., you have a whole different set of rules than the U.S. companies.”
But if you are just regulating in the normal course, that should not be a subject for dispute settlement. We try to plug those holes in a very explicit way, so that we do have freedom to act, protect public health and safety and the environment. …
Q: How do you see these policies as walking the line between the environment and economic interests — Papahanaumokuakea, for example?
A: I’m glad you asked that question because one of the things that I’ve come to, in working on these issues over the last several years, is the understanding that conservation and economics, environmental sustainability and economic sustainability, have to actually be meshed with each other.
We’re not going to have conservation if there’s not also economic sustainability. Obviously, we’re not going to have an economy if we don’t have the planet.
Less simplistically with regard to fish, for commercial fishing, you have to have fish. So one of the roles that marine protected areas play is allowing fish to rejuvenate in an area where fishing doesn’t occur.
And of course, fish don’t know, “Oh, I’m at the boundary of the marine protected area”; they swim around. As they’re rejuvenating in an area, then that can help repopulate the fishing stocks that are commercially fished.
When we look at designing these marine protected areas, we actually take public comment, we look at where’s traditional fishing taking place, and we take those things into account. So that is also how the line is walked.
Marine protected areas aren’t just to create areas where we can all go as tourists and look at fish, which is a great thing to do. They are also very important in actually fueling the commercial ability to fish for the future.
In fact, scientists say we should probably have about 10 percent of the ocean as marine protected areas if we want to be able to sustain everything. There’s 3 percent globally right now, so we have a ways to go. The U.S. is doing pretty well; we have about 30 percent as marine protected areas.
But the ocean is a big place. Even if you can’t fish in what seems to be a huge marine protected area, you’ve got the whole rest of the ocean for fishing.
So for me, I think these things (economy and environment) are very symbiotic, it’s not a zero-sum game at all. …
Q: What enforcement strategies are being discussed and tried?
A: Secretary (John) Kerry launched an initiative called the Safe Ocean Network. This is aimed at how do we find the illegal fishers? How do we interdict them and then prosecute them?
The idea behind this is, again, the ocean’s a big place. You can’t be all things to all people in all places at once. … We use technology to help pinpoint where. …
Q: Surveillance?
A: Interestingly, there is technology that the U.S. government has that it uses, dubbed Marine Domain Awareness, that we use for all kinds of things, such as for illegal fishing.
But NGOs (non-government organizations) also have their own satellites that they’re using to do this and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has its own satellite.
One of the interesting things about the NOAA satellite is it’s taking pictures at night. You can see the lights on the boats at night. You know where your boundaries are for fishing, and if there’s a bunch of lights at night someplace where they’re not supposed to be, you know something’s going on there. …
Q: A lot of this has existed for some time, so is it being ramped up now?
A: Hugely ramped up. It’s existed, but like anything, if it exists like this (gestures to describe silos), it’s just not nearly as powerful as if it’s linked together.
You have all this information, a ton of it, but it hasn’t been necessarily getting to the people who need to have it, so they can then go and use it to get the bad guys.
Q: So, more sharing?
A: Much more. As well as, I think within our own government, a heightened recognition that illegal fishing is also a security issue. … The people who are illegally fishing are also often trafficking in people, trafficking in weapons, trafficking in drugs, so you’re getting at more than just that.
