Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 9 • Number 11 • 12th June 2009
Trade Leaders Call for Fisheries Subsidies Reform
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Key trade officials marked the occasion of the first World Oceans day by calling for reform of global fisheries subsidies. Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO, and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk released separate statements recognising both the threat of overfishing and the role that subsidies play in contributing to the problem.
Lamy stressed that the US$16 billion in worldwide fisheries subsides are having a harmful effect on the world’s oceans. But he insisted that sustainability can be achieved through negotiations at the WTO.
“WTO members are now negotiating to reform these subsidies programmes so that the fishing becomes a sustainable industry and so that we can fully appreciate our oceans’ bounty for generations to come,” the director-general said. “A deal in the WTO now, would mean richer oceans for the future generations.”
Lamy cautioned that mismanagement of the world’s fish stocks would not only have environmental impacts, but social ones as well. “Today, we run the risk that over fishing will so deplete fish stocks in our oceans that many species will disappear forever,” he warned. “This is not only bad news for the oceans it is bad news for the world’s 43.5 million full time fishers.”
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk took a similar approach, noting the alarming connection between plummeting fish stocks and the millions of people who rely on the oceans for their food and livelihood. Kirk pointed out that declining stocks are directly connected to overfishing and a bloated global fishing fleet and acknowledged the important role of the trade community in helping to solve the problem. “I am pleased that trade ministers play a constructive role in helping to address some of these challenges,” he said in a statement.
The USTR also used the occasion to reaffirm his country’s commitment to the current round of WTO negotiations, including the reeling in of fisheries subsidies. “In the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Development Agenda negotiations, the United States is a leader in pressing for stronger rules that prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing,” the statement said. “We will continue to seek an ambitious outcome in those negotiations, as well as explore other ways that trade policy can help the oceans support healthy fish stocks for generations to come.”
Current fishing fleets unsustainable
The concept of an official day to recognise the world’s oceans, as a compliment to Earth Day, was first floated in the wake of the first Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. Last year, the UN General Assembly resolved that 8 June 2009 would mark the occasion of the first World Oceans Day.
Concern over mismanagement of the world’s fisheries in recent decades has brought the trade community into the environmental debate. The global fishing fleet has ballooned in the past 40 years and it is generally recognised that government subsidies worldwide have contributed to this growth.
The environmental group Oceana says that subsidies promote overcapacity and overfishing by pushing fleets to fish longer, harder and farther away than would otherwise be possible. The organisation estimates global fisheries subsidies to be somewhat higher than WTO reports - some US$20 billion annually. This would represent about a quarter of the value of the world catch.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) now estimates that more than 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks are depleted, overfished or fished to their sustainable limits, with no room for expansion. And a 2008 World Bank / FAO report estimates that overfishing has led to annual losses of some US$50 billion in marine fisheries.
Slow road to reform
The WTO’s Negotiating Group on Rules is currently engaged in a dedicated negotiation on fisheries subsidies as part of its Doha trade round. However, progress has been slow due to longstanding disagreement over core issues. A particular challenge for the group has been to balance the need to protect the world’s fish stocks from overfishing and the need to afford a just amount of ‘special and differential treatment’ to the world’s poorer countries - many of which rely heavily on the sector.
The ministerial declaration that emerged from the WTO’s 2005 Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong called on the Negotiating Group on Rules to “strengthen disciplines on subsidies in the fisheries sector, including through the prohibition of certain forms of fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and over-fishing.”
The November 2007 rules text took this into account, providing a detailed legal text for a new agreement on fisheries subsidies. Some subsidies would have been permissible for all countries, provided that they maintain an international standard fisheries management system. But it soon became clear that many governments considered the proposed disciplines to be too strict.
Given the controversy that arose over some of the fisheries portions of the November 2007 text, the chair of the rules group, Ambassador Guillermo Valles Galmés of Uruguay, released a more general ‘roadmap’ for the fisheries discussions on 19 December 2008 (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 23 January 2009, http://ictsd.net/i/news/biores/38538/). The chair indicated that the purpose of the roadmap was to allow delegates to take a step back from the most recent draft text - without abandoning it - and “reflect on the fundamental issues” of its mandate to “strengthen disciplines on subsidies in the fisheries sector” and establish “appropriate and effective” flexibilities for poorer countries.
At the most recent meeting of the Negotiating Group on Rules, Members avoided controversial issues but continued to follow the chair’s roadmap (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 29 May 2009, http://ictsd.net/i/news/biores/47628/).
ICTSD reporting.
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