'Restoring the oceans'

Long-term solutions lie in reversing global warming, sea level rise, pollution, and overharvesting, but in the short term we can nurse back devastated ecosystems into economically productive habitats. Proven restoration techniques are not being used because policymakers and funders won't support new methods, preferring massive subsidies to industrial fishing fleets to rape the oceans rather than investing in poor fishing communities. If these perverse subsidies were turned over to subsistence fishermen in coastal communities to restore fisheries habitats, there could be plenty of fish for future generations, but they must change from big game hunters to farmers, bringing the Neolithic revolution to the oceans 10,000 years later. The future of the oceans depends on it.

Thomas Goreau in response to 'Troubled Waters', a special report in The Economist.