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Fishermen's union leader rejects $ 150,000 American award

India's National Fishworkers Forum president Father Thomas Kocherry's decision to spurn the Pew Fellowship, an American award intended to support marine conservation, has been hailed by the local media even as there is consternation among officials of Sunoco, the company which instituted the award.

Father Kocherry, leader of India's fishworkers movement, declared that if he accepted $ 150,000 from a foundation started by the owners of the Philadelphia-based Sunoco (or Sun Oil) company, it could compromise the fishworkers's fight against pollution.

He alleged that Sun Oil has been one of the world's largest polluters and ''a polluter giving an award for marine conservation is a contradiction.''

The Pew Charitable Trusts, which gives about 10 to 12 awards each year, said in response to Father Kocherry's statement it was proud of its heritage.

''We have invested millions of dollars in environmental programmes of which we are proud,'' Barbara Beck, a spokesperson for the Pew Charitable Trusts, said. ''What's more, we have no financial, or other relationship, with Sun Oil anymore.''

Environmentalists blame Sunoco for habitat destruction and water pollution in many areas of the world. For years they have pointed to the destructive effects of the company's oil drilling near Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. In the 1970s, the company also drilled for oil on Shapra-Candoshi Indian land in the northern Peruvian Amazon rain forest.

For these reasons, Father Kocherry says, he has refused the award. Industrial pollution that has caused the severe degradation of marine and coastal environments has led to reduced fish availability and affected the livelihoods of traditional fishing communities within India and worldwide, he says.

Industrialisation and Western technologies, such as bottom trawling for largescale fish harvest, have led to the current fisheries crisis, Father Kocherry adds.

In India, the NFF, under Father Kocherry's leadership, has fought large fleets and polluting industries through legal battles and protests. In 1989, the forum organised 'The Kanyakumari March' along the entire coastline of India to create awareness on the coastal environmental problems affecting traditional fish workers.

In 1991, the NFF won a case in the Supreme Court against the government's joint venture or deep sea fishing policy that opened up India's water to large commercial vessels.

Because of this victory, in 1996 the court ordered to demolish all coastal industrial aquaculture farms while allowing the traditional practices to continue. But with the government's recent introduction of a aquaculture bill aiming to circumvent the court ruling, Father Kocherry's battles are far from over.

With NFF's limited resources, the Pew grant could have provided some much needed support, but Father Kocherry says that accepting the money might compromise the fishing organisations's activities.

He is not alone in raising questions over the Pew Foundation. Last month, in a investigative series on the influence foundations wield over their recipients, the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote how the foundation used its grants to promote corporate agendas.

''The heirs of the ultraconservative patriarch of the Sun Oil fortune are now using oil wealth to promote an ambitious agenda of privatisation and corporate control of public resources, all under the guise of citizen participation initiatives,'' the newspaper said.

Reporter Ron Curran gave numerous examples of how grant recipients had to change their original goals or plans to fit Pew's requests.

Two other newspapers, The Wall Street Journal and The Philadelphia Inquirer have come out against Pew's influence on news coverage.

'Pew has created and funded dozens of programmes and independent organisations to carry out agendas determined by the foundation... It has promoted its own causes, pursued its own initiatives, bankrolled its own research, and imposed its own order,' wrote Philadelphia reporter Stephen Salisbury.

One of Father Kocherry's biggest concerns is over-fishing in the waters of southern countries, both by local large-scale concerns and by the fishing fleets of industrialised countries who have already depleted northern stocks.

''There is an international agreement and many laws to protect fisheries worldwide,'' says Max Aguero, general director of the Chile-based Research Organisation of the Inter-American Centre for Sustainable Ecosystems Development.

''But industrial fleets do not fully respect the regulations, and developing countries do not have the resources to enforce them. As an international community, we must find ways to self-regulate.''

Liberalisation has caused an increase in these fleets and polluting industries along the coasts of developing countries, says Father Kocherry.

In a statement to the United Nations and world leaders, Father Kocherry is calling for a global ban on factory trawlers.

''The earth's peoples's only chance to rescue this critically important food resource depends upon concerted multinational action,'' the statement read.

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