Away from Rio, a Big Victory for a Small Conservation Group

While world leaders in Rio were casting adrift an imperiled planet, an impassioned young Frenchwoman forced a giant supermarket chain to stop pretending that its bottom-fishing trawler fleet was safeguarding the future of fish.

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In artillery terms, the case against Intermarché by Claire Nouvian and her tiny non-profit association, Bloom, is pretty small-bore compared to a dud Earth Summit.

Yet as the French oceanographer Philippe Cury exulted when he heard the news, “Small victories win great wars.”

That rings true to a reporter who over decades has watched governments and big business sidestep serious action to avert ecological calamity.

Ms. Nouvian hauled Intermarché before a jury in the French court that oversees truth in advertising. When ordinary citizens looked at scientific evidence, the case was open and shut.

Writ large, the decision suggests that measures to protect the earth’s dwindling resources may have to come from the bottom up.

Elected leaders know voters resist present sacrifice for future benefit. Similarly, company executives worry about profit now, not prospects later. So little gets done unless someone is pilloried in public.

Ms. Nouvian’s landmark — or at least watermark — case was about bottom trawling, the use of heavy nets that scrape fragile ocean floors for endangered slow-growing species.

Intermarché belongs to the French group, Les Mousquetaires, which also owns a large Brittany-based trawler fleet that supplies its well-stocked fish counters.

Its ad campaign boasted that it “plays a determinant role in maintaining sustainable fishing in France, the preservation and renewal of marine resources.”

Ms. Nouvian jumped on the company’s assertion that its fishing practices down to 1,500 meters, or about 5,000 feet, caused less damage than a hiker’s footprint on a beach.

“That would be laughable if it didn’t sow doubt among officials and legislators,” she said. “This total scorn for truth bogs down the debate in technical detail and suggests there is scientific controversy, which there is not.”

She cited the gold-standard International Council for the Exploitation of the Sea, which classed all French and European Union deep-sea catch as beyond safe biological limits.

The French court ordered Intermarché to stop the ad campaign and also drop a logo that is similar to the Marine Stewardship Council seal of approval.

(An Intermarché spokeswoman told the daily Le Figaro that the company had not planned to repeat the campaign and that she did know what would be done about the label.)

Such small steps from the bottom hardly seem up to saving a large planet of divergent interests. Even after the ruling, some French politicians in Brussels appear determined to defend Intermarché’s position.

But things move fast in a wired world. Ms. Nouvian reports “an amazing reach and result.” Maria Damanaki, the E.U. fishing commissioner, tweeted news of the victory. Bloom is part of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, which made some waves in Rio.

In any case, if world leaders don’t lead, what is the option?