We are at a critical moment. In 2008, the UNEP Executive Director stated that:

“The world’s oceans are already under stress as a result of overfishing, pollution and other environmentally-damaging activities in the coastal zones and now on the high seas. Climate change is presenting a further and wide-ranging challenge with new and emerging threats to the sustainability and productivity of a key economic and environmental resource....We are now observing what may become, in the absence of policy changes, a collapsing ecosystem with climate the final coup d’grace.”

We know the risks. We should act now to prevent further deterioration, in line with the Future Justice policy principles. One glance at these principles shows that a continued failure to stop this practice will necessarily cause injustice and insecurity in the future. Bottom trawling threatens the environment, aggravates poverty and inequity, and violates precaution towards natural resources, ecosystems and human health. Absence of clear governance threatens human security and the poor pay the price in a flawed consumption and production model.

Yet governments continue to authorise bottom trawling and companies continue to engage in it. In our view, when individuals act despite knowing the threat from their acts to the survival of ecosystems – for example, from economic activities or from regulatory approval of such activities, which gravely or irreparably imperil the conditions of survival of a given ecosystem - this should constitute a crime against future generations.

The practice of bottom-trawling is a good example where we do not need to wait for such a crime to be committed. We have a clear warning of the possibility of that crime, and we need to do all we can now to prevent the threat to the oceans that this practice entails.

We need to develop systems and to identify circumstances in which certain laws and policies are likely to lead to crimes against future generations. If we are not already too late, we can make a start with bottom trawling.