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Countries push back at WTO ending subsidies for fisheries

WORLDWIDE
Tuesday, May 04, 2021, 18:00 (GMT + 9)

The following is an excerpt from an article published by Bloomberg News :

Despite 34% of global fish populations being overexploited, the big fishers want the same treatment as the small fry

After 20 years of negotiations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is accelerating an effort to end $22bn in government subsidies that prop up fishing industries — a key driver of plummeting fish stocks all over the world.

Now, some 34% of global fish populations are overexploited, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. In the least developed countries, fish make up more than 25% of protein consumption; in coastal communities, it can be up to 80%. Yet, the wealthiest countries subsidise industrial fleets that outcompete small-scale fishermen in poorer nations.

Unless something is done, environmentalists warn that the pace of overfishing threatens an unprecedented global hunger crisis and ecological disaster.

This year, new WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian economist who is both the first woman and African to hold the position, made the issue her top priority — with a conference set for July that could help seal an international accord. Isabel Jarrett, manager of the reducing harmful fisheries subsidies programme at The Pew Charitable Trusts, said of the negotiations: “We are closer to an agreement than ever before.”

But bids by several nations for exemptions and loopholes could jeopardise its effectiveness at a critical moment for the planet’s oceans.

Nations intent on protecting food access and local economies have been pouring money into fishing for decades, encouraging the continued depletion of resources by enabling struggling fisheries to expand.

In the 1970s, only 10% of the world’s known fish resources were overfished, a figure that has since more than tripled. Nevertheless, the industry continues to catch the same amount of fish as it did decades ago: the global marine catch has been about 81-million tonnes a year since the 1990s.

Image: Pew Charitable Trusts

Much of that is driven by subsidies

Ironically, reducing fishing pressure will allow stocks to rebound, improving global food security — a critical consideration given the global population has climbed by more than 2.4-billion since 1990. If governments ended subsidies, more than 35-million tonnes of fish — or 12.5% of all the fish in the sea — could be restored by 2050, according to researchers.

“In the short term, providing funds to build a new boat or to reduce the cost of fuel seems positive, but it is simply encouraging fishers to overfish,” said Jarrett. “There will likely be some short-term pain in some places, but an agreement will enable us to have long-term sustainability of fish stocks.”

National efforts to protect fishing industries by encouraging boatbuilding stretch back to the 1950s, said Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor, a resource economist at the University of British Columbia. These days, the top five biggest providers of subsidies are China, the US, the EU, Japan and South Korea — which, combined, dole out more than 50% of fisheries subsidies.

“We totally overbuilt our capacity to fish. There was still the idea that the oceans were somehow inexhaustible,” Cisneros-Montemayor said of early efforts to encourage fishing. “Now, subsidies are required to maintain a profit in [many] fishing communities.” Without subsidies, as much as 54% of ocean fish stocks wouldn’t be profitable, according to one 2018 study.

Retailers seeking to mollify environmentally conscious consumers are pushing for an end to subsidies as well. Walmart, for example, has set a goal of having all fresh and frozen fish it sells certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, a group which promotes sustainable fishing. “There are too many boats and not enough fish,” said Sarah Thorn, senior director of global government affairs at Walmart. “It’s frustrating for us that governments using subsidies undermine the work we are doing.”

Thorn co-authored a World Economic Forum opinion essay last September calling for approval of the WTO deal, and lamenting the lack of policies that could turn trade strategies into environmental solutions. But the proposed accord faces some big obstacles: the signatories themselves.

The world’s nations have already shown a willingness to ignore such global mandates. A 2020 deadline set by the UN sustainable development goal 14.6, which also sought to bar fishing subsidies, has come and gone unfulfilled.(continues...)

Author: Virginia Gewin/Bloomberg News | Read the full article by clicking the link here

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