Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 22 • 9th December 2005

Darwin’s Nightmare Misconceptualises Fish Trade, IUCN Says

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The Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization and IUCN-The World Conservation Organization on 8 December sent a letter to the creator of “Darwin’s Nightmare” — a documentary by Hubert Sauper that has won sixteen awards and is nominated for an Oscar award for its depiction of the trade in the Nile Perch fish from Lake Victoria — saying that the film is based on a misconceptualised, sensationalist and inaccurate reading of the impact of fisheries exports on the communities around Lake Victoria, Tanzania. The letter suggests that the film is based on anecdotal, insufficiently researched information from people who are not directly involved with all the communities in the area, makes a direct connection between fish exports and poverty, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, homelessness and imports of weapons and fails to provide a balanced view of the impact of fish exports to the EU on local communities that is based on the analysis of Africans active in the area. “We come to no other conclusion,” IUCN and the LVFO write, “than that you specifically selected advisors and subjects who allowed you to ignore the positive impacts of the Lake Victoria fisheries, and to lead audiences to believe the false conclusion that the export of fish creates poverty.” The focus on the film, they argue, “closes the eyes of Europeans to the many benefits that the Lake Victoria fishery has brought to hundreds of thousands of people, and the progress that has been made in fighting poverty in the region”. In so doing, they note, the film perpetuates a stereotypical and sensationalist image that betrays the need to present a balanced view necessary to support the exports on which the people around the lake depend. “Darwin’s Nightmare”, a documentary film by Hubert Sauper, has won sixteen awards in the last year for its depiction of the trade in the Nile Perch fish from Lake Victoria.

To access the letter, visit http://www.iucn.org/en/news/archive/2005/12/Sauperletter.pdf

The website of the film is http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/

ICTSD Reporting.