Are fishing laws doing enough for human rights and climate?

As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fishing regulation and its importance to environmental and human rights.

They discuss past and future EU policy and its impact in South East Asia, and use Thailand as a case study to discuss the issue of durability with environmental reform. The Thai fishing sector's reliance on forced labour and overfishing reduced dramatically in the 2010s, but reforms may now be overturned.

Further reading:

• 'Europe already has the tools it needs to end forced labour', Land and Climate Review, 2023
• 'Civil society urges Thai government to stop deregulation of the fisheries industry', Environmental Justice Foundation, 2023
• Thailand’s progress in combatting IUU, forced labour & human trafficking, 2023
• The ever widening net: mapping the  scale, nature and corporate structures of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by the Chinese distant-water fleet, 2022
• A manifesto for our ocean, 2023
• 'Denmark and Sweden press Brussels to act against UK in fishing dispute', Financial Times, 2024

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.