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"Life is a tragedy up close, but a comedy from a distance," Charlie Chaplin famously said. Here, there is a pink lake that is not realistic at all. From a distance, it is mysterious, but up close, it hides tragedy. The background of the tragedy is the small country of Gambia in West Africa. Why did that lake in The Gambia turn pink?



Gambia leases land to China for 99 years

The Gambia is one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the GDP by country published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 2023, The Gambia has the 223th smallest GDP out of 16 countries. That's how small the economy is. The Gambia was colonized by the United Kingdom until it gained independence in 1965 and withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations in 1970. In the 2010s, however, Gambia was backed by China. In the background, Taiwan and fish.

The Gambia originally had long-standing diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but in 2013 it abruptly announced the end of diplomatic relations. In 2016, it restored diplomatic relations with China that had been severed. China, which advocates the "one China" principle, has long pursued a strategy to isolate Taiwan from the international community, including the establishment of diplomatic relations with The Gambia.

Since then, China has stepped up its economic support, including the cancellation of $1 million in debt from The Gambia, and the Gambian government responded by allowing Chinese companies to lease land for 400 years. Gambian law prohibits foreign nationals from renting land for more than 99 years, with an exception to this rule.

China took advantage of this to build a factory in Gambia called Golden Lead and promised to create jobs through it. It is a fishmeal factory. Was the establishment of a factory in China really a "win-win" for the two countries?



Chinese factories were built and fish disappeared

Fish meal is, to put it simply, fish meal. It is used as the main ingredient in feed for farmed fish, which is steamed and pressed to remove moisture and ground into powder. It has a high protein content and is rich in amino acids and fatty acids necessary for growth. Small fish with low commodity value are mainly used to make fish meal.


As the proportion of aquaculture has increased, the demand for fishmeal has also increased significantly. As shown in the graph above, the global supply from aquaculture accounts for half of all fishery production. This is related to the severe depletion of marine resources, with 50% of large fish in the ocean extinct over the past 90 years. There are no more fish in the ocean to meet our needs.

Naturally, the question arises. "If you don't have enough fish, you can't even make the fish meal that you grind the fish?" In fact, overfishing has been combined with climate change, and the catch of fish that is used as an ingredient for fish meal is constantly decreasing. China's construction of a factory as far away as Gambia, West Africa, is aimed at responding to the exploding demand for fishmeal around the world, regardless of whether the fishmeal business will be sustainable in the future.

It takes 1~3 kg of fish to produce 4 kg of fish meal. One fishmeal plant in The Gambia alone produces more than 7,500 tons of fish per year. Bonga (herring fish) and bandana, which are commonly caught in this area, are typical examples. The total amount of fish put into the fishmeal factory is about half of the total protein intake in The Gambia. Bonga, which was a cheap food that was widely consumed by the masses before the Chinese factories were built, has now risen in price to the point that ordinary people in The Gambia cannot afford it. It is said that there is even a situation where seafood farmed with fish meal made in Gambian factories is imported from Gambia and eaten.


(The rest of the story is from the soup)