Several fisheries experts in developing countries have described what they see as the hypocrisy of industrialized countries demanding developing nations cut subsidies to their fisheries at ongoing World Trade Organization talks.
Azim Premji University Visiting Professor John Kurien, an expert in small-scale fisheries who supports a more-expansive WTO deal on fisheries subsidies, said countries with large fleets bear a particular historical responsibility for depletion of stocks.
“The fisheries and fishing communities in developed, industrial countries have all been highly subsidized for decades,” Kurien told SeafoodSource. ”The present demands on developing countries to reduce subsidies is totally unjust and a hypocrisy.”
Inequality is a central grievance shared by fishery representatives and researchers from developing countries watching the talks, according to Alassane Dieng, the head of Groupement des Armateurs et Industriels de la Pêche au Sénégal (GAIPES), a Senegalese body representing artisanal fishermen.
“This deal is being done in the image of what’s happening with climate change where those who are most responsible suffer the least consequences,” Dieng said.
Last year’s deal prohibited illegal fishing and fishing on overfished or unregulated stocks, but failed to include text limiting subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing. Dieng said the 2021 WTO deal is “the least-constraining for countries with the large fleets who are historically responsible for the decline of stocks worldwide by transferring their overcapacity to less advanced countries.”
Throughout the negotiations, developing countries have insisted artisanal fisheries, which they consider central to economic and food security, are not limited.
Francis K E Nunoo, a professor of fisheries science at the University of Ghana, said awareness about the WTO fishery negotiations remains patchy in the developing world. Several West African nations, including Cameroon and Ghana, are preoccupied by rampant illegal fishing by foreign vessels in their domestic waters, as well as their effort to address issues raised by the European Union that have resulted in yellow card warnings that threaten their E.U. seafood exports.
“The nation has made great gains in reducing [illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing] through ministerial directives to reduce fishing efforts and transshipment at sea.”
Ghana is grappling with “inadequate enforcement of regulations,” said Nunoo. He said there has been little engagement by stakeholders to explain the issues at stake in the WTO deal and ongoing talks on expanding it.
Zuzy Anna, director of the University of Padjadjaran’s Sustainable Development Goals Center in Bandung, Indonesia said Indonesia’s government wants to preserve supports for fuel, vessel construction and maintenance, and port infrastructure to support its small-scale fisheries.
“Indonesia wants to maintain subsidies to its artisanal fleet because more than 85 percent of the fishermen are small-scale fisheries,” Anna told SeafoodSource. “Since Indonesia is still going on giving subsidies in the form of fuel to fishermen under certain conditions, the government believes that the WTO agreement will still allow countries to continue providing subsidies in this kind of form. Nevertheless, the fishers must comply with measurable fishing policies of effective and sustainable fisheries management.”
Anna said the WTO deal will require more transparency from member-states on the scale of subsidies to their fleets as well as on the state of local stocks. The WTO has supported those measures by establishing a fund to help train officials in developing countries to gather such data.
Gonzalo Macho Rivero, an artisanal fisheries expert at the Universidade de Vigo in Spain, said he believes small-scale fisheries will not be impacted by restrictions on subsidies if only because measuring such stocks is incomplete.
“I don´t foresee much change for the artisanal fisheries,” he told SeafoodSource. “Actually, most of the stocks worldwide do not have reference points and formal stock assessments, so [it’s] not clear if they are overfished or not, although there might be indications of a poor status. Fleets fishing those stocks would still be subsidized, and many of those stocks are key for the artisanal fleet.”
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Rodriguez, a fisheries specialist at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain’s key fisheries region, said a major weakness of the WTO deal was that it focused on smaller coastal fisheries rather than high seas operations where illegal behavior is rampant. Given that states don’t have jurisdiction outside their exclusive economic zones, the impact of any deal that doesn’t address the high seas is of limited value, he said.
“The field is open for fleets like the Chinese and Russian, in which the disavowal of all types of norms is a constant, the prevalence of illegal fishing high, and the conditions of the crews deplorable,” he said.
Despite the numerous obstacles, the WTO hopes to complete a deal by the summer of 2024 that includes a ban on subsidies of fishing operations targeting overfished stocks, and on subsidies supporting fishing-fleet overcapacity.
But complicating matters further is the concern of delegates from the U.S. and E.U., who are concerned special treatment for developing countries will weaken the agreement, and that their own efforts at managing their fleets sustainably are not matched by nations such as China and Russia. And other nations, such as India, may condition their support for any deal on reciprocal support for its demands in other WTO negotiations, such as the Trade Related Intellectual Property framework.
Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at England’s University of Exeter, said the divergent priorities of various players will make for difficult months of negotiations ahead. Nonetheless, he urged all sides to come to an agreement.
“Feeding a fishery with subsidies in a developing country is equally harmful to doing so in rich nations,” Roberts said. “Developing nations would do well to heed the lessons from industrialized nations that subsidies promote overfishing, habitat damage, and stock collapse.”
Photo courtesy of Dakshin
