Quick Win No. 2
Adopt rules on subsidies to address overcapacity and overfishing
Overfishing is a major sustainable development challenge. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that over 35% of assessed fish stocks are over-exploited. This creates an imbalance in marine ecosystems and undermines the livelihoods of communities that depend on fishing for their food and income. Subsidies are a big part of the problem. When they reduce the cost of fishing they enable vessels to catch more than would otherwise be economically feasible and often more than fish stocks can sustain. Subsidies can also deepen inequality: researchers estimate that around 80% of fisheries subsidies go to large-scale fishing, and only 20% to small-scale or artisanal fishing.
The problem of subsidies to fishing has been understood for a long time. As part of the Doha Round of negotiations, WTO members gave themselves a mandate to negotiate new subsidy rules, including a prohibition on “certain subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing,” along with special and differential treatment for developing country members. After many long years of work, and active engagement and support from civil society and leaders around the world, members reached an agreement on key fisheries subsidy disciplines at the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in June 2022. These rules on subsidies to illegal fishing, to overfished stocks, and to unregulated high seas fishing, which are set out in the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, are the first multilateral trade rules focused on the environment. They are a major achievement. While members did not reach an agreement on all of the rules on the table, they committed to concluding additional disciplines, if possible, by the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13), on those subsidies that contribute more broadly to overcapacity and overfishing.
It is hard to call the conclusion of over 20 years of work a quick win, but agreement on additional rules is absolutely within reach. Achieving this will require balancing a number of factors. Demands for flexibility to subsidize artisanal fishers where they have few livelihood options need to be balanced against the imperative of preserving the sustainability of the fisheries on which artisanal fishers depend directly for food and livelihoods. Demands for more flexibility on subsidies for current fishing fleets need to be balanced against demands for the same flexibility for aspiring fishing fleets. Both of these demands need to be balanced against the reality that governments must manage shared resources responsibly if their fleets are to be able to continue fishing. The rules would ideally be flexible enough to meet short-term political imperatives but also firm enough to set global fisheries on a track to sustainable profitability.
A key challenge members face is in fact the “quickness” of this win. They have only a few negotiating weeks before MC13 to finalize the text of these additional rules. Although this seems like a barrier, the deal that was eventually concluded at MC12 took shape in the same amount of time. There are already proposals on the table, and negotiators are familiar with the issues, the data and the trade-offs. They are working with pieces of a puzzle they know well, as do their capital-based officials. They have an epistemic community of researchers, campaigners and fishers representatives who know the issues and the politics and can be called on for support and advice.
Members are already doing what needs to be done. They have rolled up their sleeves and are actively negotiating the shape and content of new rules. What they need now is positive political pressure and technical support to help them get over the finish line again.
