- The WTO’s General Council meeting in Geneva in July failed again to finalize a treaty to stop “harmful” fishing subsidies that enable unsustainable fishing, hindered by India’s objections.
- Only 81 out of 166 member states have formally accepted the partial “Fish One” agreement, and progress on “Fish Two” remains stalled.
- Harmful subsidies continue to deplete fish stocks, jeopardizing marine ecosystems and food security for 3 billion people.
- In light of the 25-year struggle for international consensus, some observers suggest states instead strike bi- or plurilateral agreements to eliminate harmful subsidies.
Hopes for closure on a fair deal to stop governments bankrolling overfishing flopped yet again at the recent General Council meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva.
Scheduled decision-making sessions aimed at closing the second half of a legally binding treaty to curb harmful fisheries subsidies were downgraded to a discussion at the July 22–23 gathering, after India raised objections to the draft text.
“We will never succeed in concluding the negotiations if one seeks disciplines and obligations to apply to others and exemptions and carve-outs for oneself,” João Aguiar Machado, head of the E.U. Permanent Mission to Geneva, stated at the meeting.
The WTO has been negotiating a treaty to prevent subsidies that encourage or support overfishing and illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing for 25 years and counting. The negotiating group was given a 2020 deadline, in 2015, to land a deal in line with U.N. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.6, which aims to tackle overfishing by banning subsidies for illegal fishing and preventing new harmful subsidies while stressing fair treatment for developing nations. This is now years overdue.
A partial deal, dubbed “Fish One” was finally struck at the WTO’s 12th ministerial conference in June 2022. But delegates couldn’t settle on how to balance the needs of rich and poor nations to land “Fish Two,” either then, at the 13th ministerial conference in March, or now.
“In the meantime, fish stocks continue to suffer, and the WTO is unable to deliver on Sustainable Development Goal 14.6,” Machado said.
What are harmful fisheries subsidies?
Governments worldwide hand out grants and tax breaks to their fishing industries, boosting production and profits by inflating revenues or slashing costs. So-called “harmful” subsidies, especially for fuel and equipment, enable fishing in otherwise unprofitable areas, spurring on unsustainable fishing and wrecking marine ecosystems. This threatens local communities that rely on seafood for jobs and food security for the 3 billion people the U.N. says depend on the ocean for their primary protein source.
More than a third of global fish stocks are overfished and another half are maximally sustainably fished, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Yet states have funneled subsidies estimated at more than $400 billion into activities that lead to overfishing so far this century, despite commitments to biodiversity and climate goals.
Annually, governments spend about $35 billion on fishing subsidies, of which more than $22 billion is deemed harmful, according to a 2019 study in Marine Policy. Top spenders? China, the EU, the U.S., South Korea and Japan.
Systemic Issues?
Only 81 WTO member states out of 166 have formally accepted Fish One; 29 more are needed to bring it into force. And with Fish Two slipping off the hook again, some are losing faith. Multilateral WTO negotiations are consensus-based, so a single member state can block a deal indefinitely.
“Given the twenty-plus years it has taken to get this far, with only one member seemingly, India, blocking consensus, it feels like the time has come to discuss the viability of a plurilateral solution instead,” Philip Chou, senior director of global policy at the international ocean conservation group Oceana, told Mongabay via email. This would entail more than two states striking an agreement to eliminate harmful subsidies under the auspices of the WTO, but not the unanimity required for a multilateral agreement.
“I did not go to the Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi this year because I thought there was no point,” Rémi Parmentier, director of the Varda Group, a Netherlands-, Spain- and U.K.-based social and environmental consultancy, who has been attending WTO fisheries subsidies talks since 1999, told Mongabay via email. “It’s like Waiting for Godot” he said, referencing Samuel Beckett’s play in which the titular character, the focus of the play’s dialogue, never arrives.
The “dire consequences” of continued failure to agree reach far beyond fish, Parmentier said. This fisheries subsidies treaty is an economic baby compared with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that U.N. members agreed to in 2022, which aims to equitably reform incentives that harm global biodiversity by 2030, he said. “If countries continue after 25 years of endless talks to resist eliminating harmful fisheries subsidies which represent some USD 20 Billion per year, how are we meant to believe them when they say they’ll start eliminating per year USD 500 billions of wider harmful subsidies by 2030?”
India’s objections
The draft Fish Two agreement doesn’t effectively discipline states with large-scale industrial fishing capabilities they already developed through subsidies, and this would undermine crucial sustainability goals, according to India’s pre-meeting submissions for changes to the treaty text. It is also skewed to benefit big fishing nations while unfairly compromising those with predominantly small-scale fishers, contends India, which has not ratified Fish One. The Indian Permanent Mission to Geneva did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.
India’s objectives are “difficult to understand,” María Pagán, chief of the U.S. Permanent Mission to Geneva, said in a post-meeting statement, because its objections “have found no support among the vast majority of members.” The U.S. formally accepted Fish One in April 2024.
But India does have some support. “India has negotiated to fulfil its national interest,” Parid Ridwanuddin, coastal and marine campaign manager at the Indonesian Forum for Environment, told Mongabay.
Indonesia, like India, has many communities dependent on small-scale fishing and has neither ratified Fish One nor agreed to the draft text of Fish Two because of perceived inequity and bias toward the interests of developed countries. “The formulation of the existing text does not reflect the interests of Indonesian fishermen,” Ridwanuddin said. His organization has lobbied for curbing subsidies on Indonesia’s bigger fishing outfits, but retaining them for small-scale fishers.
Fewer than half of WTO member states have actually signed up to Fish One two years after it was agreed. But this may not always be because they reject the draft text. “I think that some members are waiting for Fish II to get finalized and then ratify, knowing that Fish I will disappear anyways if Fish II can’t be agreed,” Chou said.
He referred to a “sunset clause” in the treaty: If comprehensive rules are not in place within four years of ratification by two-thirds of WTO member states, the entire treaty will be terminated.
Vast effort has been made and comfort zones breached in attempts to reach consensus. Many states want the deal landed now, including some least-developed and small island nations that say continuing without a deal is worse than adopting an imperfect deal.
“No agreement only gives comfort and coverage to the largest subsidizers,” Matthew Wilson, Barbados’ ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said in a statement on LinkedIn, expressing disappointment that the Fish Two text failed at the General Council. “It leaves small vulnerable economies, small island developing states and least developed countries completely without protection, and recourse.” Barbados ratified Fish One in February 2024.
What now?
Informal meetings resume in mid-September, after the WTO’s summer recess, and fisheries subsidies will likely be on the agenda once again.
With Fish Two negotiations floundering, Parmentier pointed out that states are free to eliminate their own harmful subsidies whenever they like. One option, he suggested, would be for “countries chasing the same fish to agree to eliminate their subsidies in a coordinated manner,” by striking bilateral and regional “fleet disarmament” agreements outside the WTO, following the approach used to adopt nuclear disarmament treaties.
The Third U.N. Ocean Conference scheduled for June 2025 is another crucial opportunity to reinvigorate moves to meet SDG 14 obligations, Parmentier said. States gathered there could decide they won’t wait for the WTO and will eliminate harmful fisheries subsidies from their national budgets immediately.
“What is needed is concrete action, not more declarations,” he said.
Banner image: A local fisherman casts his net at a beach in Chennai, India. Image by Well-Bred Kannan via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Correction 8/1/24: Due to an editorial oversight, an earlier version of this story omitted several words (“subsidies which represent some USD 20 Billion”) from a quote by Rémi Parmentier, as well as the locations of the Varda Group’s headquarters. It also gave an incorrect name for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The story has now been updated with these mistakes corrected and minor editorial changes made. We regret the errors.
Billions in fishing subsidies finance social, ecological harm, report finds
Citation:
Sumaila, U. R., Ebrahim, N., Schuhbauer, A., Skerritt, D., Li, Y., Kim, H. S., … Pauly, D. (2019). Updated estimates and analysis of global fisheries subsidies. Marine Policy, 109, 103695. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2019.103695
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