Saving Seafood

President Biden’s flurry of actions to protect the environment reignites a controversy about the Atlantic’s only marine monument

January 22, 2021 — Last June, as part of a concerted campaign to dismantle the environmental policies of the Obama administration, Donald Trump met with fishermen in Maine and signed a proclamation that allowed commercial fishing in nearly 5,000 square miles of federally protected waters southeast of Cape Cod.

But elections have consequences, and on Wednesday President Joe Biden signed an executive order that could overturn Trump’s decision and restore the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean to its former status, part of a flurry of executive actions Biden took on his first day in office to reverse many of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks.

Environmental advocates called the first steps promising, a welcome change from the policies of the past four years.

In response to Biden’s order, representatives of fishing groups urged the new administration to consult them before overturning Trump’s policies.

“The hope of the fishing industry is that if the Biden administration is endeavoring to unite the country, then the Biden administration will actively reach out to fishing communities and not only discuss the marine monument with them but listen to the fishing communities’ concerns and act upon those concerns,” said Andrew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington, D.C.

He and others urged the Biden administration to respect the traditional fishery management process, which allows for councils composed of fishermen, environmental advocates, and regulators to determine where and how much fishing can occur.

“I believe, as long as this is reviewed fairly, in terms of the science and law, there’s no reason that fishing shouldn’t be allowed there,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents commercial fishermen. “It’s sustainable. But if it’s a political decision and about Obama’s legacy, then it’s going to be a problem.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Permitting for big U.S. offshore wind farm will resume ‘very, very soon’: Avangrid CEO

January 21, 2021 — The developer of the first major U.S. offshore wind farm said on Wednesday it will soon apply for a federal permit from President Joe Biden’s administration, after former President Donald Trump’s government abruptly canceled its initial application last month.

Vineyard Wind will resubmit its construction plan to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management “very very soon,” Avangrid Inc CEO Dennis Arriola said in an interview, without specifying an exact date. “We believe that the pause button is going to come off and we’re going to continue right where we were,” he said.

Biden has pledged to boost development of renewable energy as part of a sweeping plan to fight climate change and create jobs, and offshore wind proponents expect the nascent U.S. industry to experience dramatic growth.

Vineyard Wind is a joint venture between power company Avangrid, a unit of Spain’s Iberdrola, and Denmark’s Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. Once constructed, the project 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard is expected to provide power to more than 400,000 Massachusetts homes.

Read the full story at Reuters

President Biden to review Trump’s changes to national monuments

January 20, 2021 — Trump’s decision to downsize the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% on lands considered sacred to Native Americans in southeastern Utah and to shrink Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half earned him applause from Utah’s Republican leaders, who considered the monuments an example of federal government overreach.

Environmental, tribal, paleontological and outdoor recreation organizations have pending lawsuits to restore the full sizes of the monuments, arguing presidents don’t have the legal authority to undo or change monuments created by predecessors.

Pat Gonzales-Rogers, executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said the group has told the Biden transition team the monument should first restored to the size Obama created and later to a larger size tribes originally requested.

The lands are sacred to tribes in the coalition: Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Indian Tribe, he said. The area includes thousands of archaeological sites on red rock lands including cliff dwellings. The Bears Ears buttes that overlook a grassy valley are particularly sacred.

“The Bears Ears is a church and the place of worship for many of our tribes,” Gonzales-Rogers said. “It should be viewed with the same type of gravitas and platform that you would view the Cathedral of Notre Dame.”

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts conservation area comprises about 5,000 square miles east of New England. It contains vulnerable species of marine life such as right whales and fragile deep sea corals. The monument was the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

Read the full White House release here

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Chicago Tribune

Biden to rejoin Paris agreement, revoke Keystone XL permit

January 20, 2021 — President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday will rejoin the Paris agreement, revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and take a slew of other environmental actions after he’s sworn in as president.

Biden plans to sign two executive orders among the 15 he will issue on his first day in office that will have ramifications for the environment as well as numerous rollbacks put in place by the Trump administration.

While one will rejoin the global climate agreement, another directs agencies across government to reconsider a number of actions taken under the previous administration, sending along a nine-page hit list of Trump era actions likely to be reversed under the Biden administration.

iden has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accord on his first day in office, part of his commitment to get the U.S. on a path to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

And in his second order he aims to halt a number of oil and gas activities, revoking the Keystone XL pipeline set to cross the border with Canada and placing a temporary moratorium on oil and gas leasing activities at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The action stops short of Biden’s ultimate goal of halting all new fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and in federal waters, though it’s an action he has pledged his administration will take.

The order also directs agencies to review boundaries for the Grand Staircase-Escalante, Bears Ears and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Trump shrunk the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments over objections from environmentalists as well as Native Americans, who argued the lands were sacred to their tribes.

In the case of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, Trump lifted protection of the area in a bid to open it to more commercial fishing.

The Wednesday action will also direct agencies to review standards for vehicles, appliances and buildings.

Read the full story at The Hill

LAURA DEATON: One key to moving the Biden agenda: Bring all three sectors to the table

January 20, 2021 — The incoming Biden administration unquestionably will bring new focus to sustainable development goals at home and abroad. Joe Biden has produced plans in an array of key areas — environmental protection, clean energy and racial equity among them — and has promised action in his first 100 days as president. His administration will be playing catch-up in all these key areas, and the best way to make rapid progress is one that doesn’t get talked about enough: building three-sector collaboration into every major initiative.

Government partnerships are nothing new, but they’re usually binary: Government agencies work with nonprofits or with businesses or gather feedback separately from each. Collaborations across all three sectors are less typical, but they generate more deeply informed, comprehensive solutions and yield wider support.

The clearest way to illustrate the value of cross-sector collaboration is to contrast what happens when one sector isn’t at the table with what’s possible when all sectors are present. The following examples of initiatives related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals show the consequences of leaving out or engaging key stakeholders — and point to how the Biden administration can do better.

Environmental NGOs have been lobbying for the 30×30 initiative to conserve 30 percent of the world’s ocean habitat by 2030, and the Biden administration is embracing that goal.

Sounds great, right? The problem is, the legislation on deck was created without meaningful input from the small-scale fishermen who have helped make U.S. fisheries the most sustainable in the world. This proposal would ban commercial fishing in at least 30 percent of U.S. marine areas, overturning the successful fisheries management system, harming coastal communities and cutting off consumer access to sustainable local seafood. The end result could be to increase long-distance imports from far less sustainable sources.

Contrast that with an example of what can happen when all three sectors work together: The nonprofit program Catch Together partners with fishing communities to create and launch community-owned permit banks, which purchase fishing quota (rights to a certain percentage of the catch in a fishery) and then lease that quota to local fishing businesses at affordable rates.

Read the full opinion piece at GreenBiz

Inaugurated as president, Biden faces host of pandemic-related woes

January 20, 2021 — As Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States on Wednesday, 20 January, the seafood and foodservice industries urged the incoming administration to provide additional funding for COVID-19 pandemic-related losses.

Today’s ceremony, making Biden the nation’s 46th president, capped off the tumultuous months between the November elections and Inauguration Day, marred by former President Donald Trump’s legal opposition to Biden’s election, along with a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol building earlier this month.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Offshore wind stagnated under Trump, Biden policies could create a boom for offshore energy

January 19, 2021 — President-elect Joe Biden’s climate plan proposes building thousands of offshore wind turbines as a key contributor to the goal of a carbon-free U.S. energy sector by 2035. 

With the states largely carrying the ball as the Trump administration stepped back from climate change and clean energy, the pressure is on for the new administration to come through on its promise. 

“The actions by the states across the country have been really important and kept the U.S. moving forward in spite of a lack of leadership in Washington,” Josh Albritton, director of climate change and energy at the Nature Conservancy, said. “That change is happening … but to get to 2050 (net-zero carbon emissions nationally) we need the federal government.”

While onshore wind power is projected to see greater growth nationally over the next 30 years, offshore wind power is far more important in the populous Northeast where topography and population density mean more permitting conflicts and fewer of the large tracts needed for utility-scale wind farms.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Times

Commercial fishing stakeholders optimistic about Biden’s pick for Commerce secretary

January 8, 2021 — Gina Raimondo received praise from fishing industry stakeholders on Thursday, 7 January, after reports broke that U.S. President-elect Joe Biden would choose her as his Commerce secretary.

National Fisheries Institute President John Connelly called Raimondo, who is currently the governor of the U.S. state of Rhode Island, an innovator capable of balancing the needs of conservation and commerce.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Offshore wind in its sails

December 18, 2020 — The Biden administration takes over on Jan. 20, and when it does, it’s expected that offshore wind energy’s prospects in the U.S. will improve greatly.

As Kirk Moore writes in the January issue of WorkBoat, offshore wind occupied a curious position in the Trump administration — often mocked and belittled by the president in public even as his own former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) forged ahead enabling plans for 15 East Coast offshore projects and studying prospects off California.

But in the new administration, expect to see more of 2010, when then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar predicted offshore wind would become a major U.S. energy source. Also, expect Biden to revive the Obama administration’s “all of the above” energy strategy.

Read the full story at National Fisherman