The World Trade Organization (WTO) recently concluded negotiations known as Fish Month to regulate subsidies that can lead to unsustainable fishing practices. During this period, new member states, including Barbados, Dominica, Senegal, and Uruguay formally accepted an Agreement to address issues of overcapacity and overfishing.
Fish Month comes after the WTO approved the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12). The Agreement regulates subsidies for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, subsidies for overfished stocks, or those with an unknown population and subsidies for fishing outside of national jurisdiction. The Agreement also requires member states to notify the WTO on the status of fisheries subsidies.
According to the WTO, the initial Agreement set at MC12 marks the first time the WTO has fully met a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target. SDG 14.6 is a target of SDG 14, Life Below Water, that relates specifically to regulating fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity, overfishing and IUU fishing and minimizing the creation of new subsidies of these kinds. The Agreement is also the first WTO agreement focused on the environment and the first binding, multilateral WTO agreement on ocean sustainability.
In this latest round of discussions, the WTO Committee on Fisheries Subsidies negotiated the outstanding issue of subsidies that cause overfishing and overcapacity. As Fish Month drew to a close, 60 member governments had formally accepted the Agreement, representing 55 percent of the total that is needed for it to come into effect.
The Committee will now present a text at the upcoming MC13 at the end of February 2024. During the Conference, the text will be reviewed and voted on by WTO ministers.
The WTO defines overcapacity as fishing at levels that exceed sustainable catch levels of a fishery, a practice which they argue leads to overfishing or IUU fishing.
Ernesto Fernández Monge, senior officer of Conservation Support for Pew Charitable Trusts and subsidies expert, tells Food Tank that the current negotiations focus on issues that members did not reach a consensus on by the time of the initial agreement.
“While the agreement reached at MC12 aims to prevent the most damaging impacts of fisheries subsidies, the ongoing talks can be seen as an opportunity to better address the underlying role of subsidies in driving overcapacity in global fishing fleets and incentivizing unsustainable levels of fishing,” Fernández Monge tells Food Tank. “As such, they are an opportunity to tackle more directly, and more broadly, one of the root causes of overfishing.”
According to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, fisheries subsidies are estimated to be about US$35 billion worldwide, with US$20 billion contributing directly to overfishing.
In December 2023, WTO Ambassador Einar Gunnarsson, Chair of the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations, released a draft of the new agreement. Current negotiations are based on this text which prohibits subsidies that contribute to overcapacity or overfishing. It also requires member countries to consider the consequences of subsidies on overcapacity and overfishing before granting them and introduces exceptions for Least Developed Countries, and for countries that are actively keeping fisheries stocks at sustainable levels.
“Let us use this opportunity to take this very important, concrete step toward improving the health of our ocean, and thus the lives and livelihoods of people everywhere,” Gunnarsson says of the fish month negotiations.
Fernández Monge tells Food Tank that current negotiations focus on identifying how to regulate countries with the largest fishing industries compared to least developed and developing countries.
“Developing countries, particularly the small ones, are the ones that will benefit the most from the agreement,” Fernández Monge tells Food Tank. He explains that many countries with major fishing industries use subsidies to operate in the waters of other countries. This means that large countries are competing with small countries and local fishing communities for the same stocks, leading to depletion.
Following MC13, if members reach an agreement, this will either be added to the MC12 agreement as an amendment or as a new agreement that will need to be accepted by member countries.
Despite being adopted by consensus at MC12, the previous agreement has not gone into effect. This is because not enough WTO member states have formally accepted the agreement individually. There is a push to ratify the agreement by MC13.
“In addition to delivering the second wave of negotiations, we hope that the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies will enter into force by MC13 as well,” says WTO Deputy Director-General Angela Ellard. “We know that many members are working hard to deposit their instruments before MC13.”
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Photo courtesy of Jean Wimmerlin, Unsplash
