1.1 Million European Citizens Call For An End To The Shark Fin Trade

     2022 is already shaping up to be a historic year for shark conservation. 2021 was an important year, for sure: nations pledged to protect the majority of the most important shark habitat on Earth, and the U.K. joined Canada in banning the shark fin trade. However, 2022 has started off with a bang.

     At the beginning of the year, 450,000 people had signed onto the European Citizens' Initiative urging the European Union to ban the shark fin trade. The European Union is relatively behind on shark conservation. They did ban the practice of shark finning in 2013 (13 years after the United States), but they have yet to ban the trade in shark fins.

     There's a persistent myth that China is the sole destination for shark fins in the world, and for a long time, that was mostly true. However, China banned the consumption of shark fin soup, a tasteless chicken- or fish-broth-based soup used to display one's wealth, at public functions years ago, and the past decade has seen shark fin consumption in China decline some 80 percent, especially among younger generations.

     However, shark fin consumption has increased in other nations. Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, and Vietnam are all major players in the shark fin trade. The biggest of them all, however, is Spain, and, more broadly, the EU, which is the source of 10 to 20 percent of the trade in shark fins. Considering 63 to 273 million sharks are killed for this brutal practice every year, banning shark fins in the EU could save upwards of 6.3 to 54.6 million sharks a year. 

     Enter the citizen's initiative Stop Finning EU, a sort of referendum that needs to get at least a million votes in two years and meet the minimum thresholds from at least seven countries to be debated by the EU. As of today, more than 1.1 million people have signed on to this initiative, an increase of 650,000 in just three weeks. At the beginning of the year, five nations had met their thresholds; now that number is 12: Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Malta, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, and Croatia. Several more nations, including Czechia, Luxembourg, and Denmark, could yet reach their thresholds, as they have all surpassed 75 percent of the necessary votes and the process continues until January 31st.

     Either way, a powerful statement has been delivered to the EU, which is now legally required to debate a shark fin ban. It appears likely to happen: 2022 could be the year that the EU and the 27 nations that comprise it ban the shark fin trade, which would be the most devastating blow to this barbaric practice in nearly a decade.