Monday, September 20, 2010

Tuna, tuna, and more (or less) tuna

Where's blogfish? Just back from this interesting city (top left). I attended a tuna meeting that was postponed from May to September, because the venue was burning thanks to riots. Part of the complex was pictured on fire the day the event was supposed to start, on the front page of CNN.com. If you still don't know, here's a hint (right).

It's tuna 2010 in Bangkok, where I represented WWF International and gave a presentation on "The role of ecolabels in the sustainability of tuna. Note the beautiful and ephemeral ice sculpture, I hope real tuna have a better future than these beautiful sculpted tuna.

My main point from the talk: contrary to what many people think, for me the most important role of ecolabels is showing the path to sustainability for currently unsustainable tuna fisheries. Without a clear path to green, today's unsustainable tuna fisheries can waste time and money making unhelpful changes. This can drain away commitment and make sustainable seem unreachable.

Here's the venue (right), note the giant screens that magnify the speaker's faces. Yikes, good idea to check before going onstage, don't want any unsightly bits of food in your teeth or other debris broadcast to the audience at 50 times life size.

More later on my trip and the conference, for now back to work in Europe.

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