Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir, the Left-Green Movement MP who recently became Iceland’s minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, has decided to amend a controversial bill on fish farming, RÚV reports.
The bill has already been submitted to Alþingi, Iceland’s Parliament, and would change the law on aquaculture operations and licenses. The most heavily criticised clause would grant indefinite licenses to fish farming companies. As it stands, the licenses run 16 years with an option to extend.
Bjarkey said that she’d received advice from legal counsel that the bill’s aims would best be reached by granting indefinite licenses. “I’m hearing that the public opinion and my legal advice are not in harmony on this issue,” Bjarkey said. “The parliament and I need to take this into account.”
The bill has been criticised by singer Björk and other environmental activists and groups, as well as Kristrún Frostadóttir, the leader of the Social Democratic Alliance. Kristrún compared the bill to the controversial law from the 1990 that handed indefinite fishing quotas to established fisheries.
“They’re acting like this is a technical, legal issue to gift these indefinite licenses,” Kristrún said.
An online petition has been started, urging MPs to reject the bill. “We the undersigned urge Alþingi to reject the government’s bill on fish farming that would grant indefinite licenses for use of our resource in Icelandic fjords without remuneration,” the petition’s mission statement reads. “The bill authorises polluting industrial production with fish farming in the most sensitive areas of Iceland’s coasts under little supervision and puts the interests of license holders first at the expense of the public interest and nature of the country.”