BLOOM challenges Macron’s government before the French State Council regarding an anti-ecological decree that undermines ocean protection.
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Concurrently, BLOOM releases an exclusive investigation, which reveals that industrial fishing activities in French marine so-called ‘protected’ areas are just as intense as in adjacent non-protected waters.
In the absence of a response from the government and after a compulsory four-month period concerning the appeal filed by BLOOM on 8 June, BLOOM has decided to sue the French government before the State Council about its MPA high protection decree, as it poses serious threats to the ocean and marine ecosystems.
The text dramatically reduces the protection of ‘marine protected areas’. Just a month before the Climate COP27 and two months before the Biodiversity COP15, BLOOM calls on judicial authorities to protect French waters from the extractive bias of the Macron government, which systematically fails to protect the climate and biodiversity despite multiple media-savvy declarations.
BLOOM also releases a groundbreaking study proving that in France, so-called ‘marine protected areas’ (MPAs) are not protected at all.
BLOOM’s research, conducted by Paco Lefrançois and using satellite data from fishing vessels, reveals that in 2021, industrial fisheries spent almost half their time (over 47%) fishing in supposedly ‘protected’ areas.
The time span of the analysis – from 1 January 2015 to 31 July 2022 – reveals that industrial vessels now spend as much time in the so-called ‘protected’ areas as in waters that are not protected.
Indeed, in France, it is perfectly possible to extract resources or to fish with towed bottom gears that scrape the seabed, such as bottom trawling or demersal seining, in so-called ‘protected’ marine areas.
BLOOM is a non-profit organization founded in 2005 that works to preserve the marine environment and species from unnecessary destruction and to increase social benefits in the fishing sector. ■