JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Delegates at the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development agreed Tuesday to seek ways to restore the world's dwindling fish stocks by 2015, though details on how that goal would be reached had not yet been agreed upon.
Still, on a day when more central issues such as plans to reduce hunger and improve water quality and sanitation on poor countries were stalled in small work groups, the progress on the issue of fishing took the spotlight.
The fishing issue comes down to a battle between Japan, the world's largest fishing nation that has been against setting a specific target date, and Europe and much of the developing world, which have pushed hard for nursing fishing stocks back to commercial health by 2012 or 2015.
In the end, Japan agreed to the 2015 date with some amendments that weaken the language to read, "to as great an extent as is possible," according to one Japanese source close to the talks.
Afterward, delegates from Japan and Europe gave the agreement a lukewarm response.
"We see this as a good first step, but other action must be taken and stricter rules must be developed in the future or the agreement will change nothing," one Italian delegate who was part of the European Union team during the talks told United Press International.
A Japanese statement on the subject said the weak language was necessary due to non-human factors that impact fish stocks.
"Fishing is only one factor (affecting the stocks) which means that human action can have only a limited impact," the statement said.
While some played the agreement up as the first major accomplishment of the 10 days of meetings, which are to conclude Sept. 4, summit organizers downplayed its importance.
"This is just an agreement on one point within a final text that is far from being finalized," a summit spokeswoman told UPI. "It is important, of course, but of limited importance in the context of what we are trying to accomplish here."
The final document is the 71-page "Draft Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development," the document that sets out the goals that will become the official statement of the conference.
As of midday Tuesday, around one-sixth of that text remained under discussion, compared to about a quarter when delegates began arriving in Johannesburg.
The final language of the section on fishing will probably not be decided upon until the heads of state arrive on Sept. 2, officials said.
According to the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released earlier this year, around 25 percent of the world's fishing resources are exhausted or nearly exhausted from over fishing. In a 2-year-old report, the U.N. Development Program painted an even grimmer picture, saying that around two-thirds of the world's commercial fishing areas were at or beyond their sustainable limit.
