As negotiators prepare for the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) twelfth Ministerial Conference (MC12), set to begin on 12 June, there are signs of optimism about a deal to end harmful fishery subsidies.
China, meanwhile, has announced a seafood processing center under construction in the south of the country, which will be the world’s biggest “distant-water fish processing hub,” handling one million tons per year when complete in 2028.
Isabel Jarrett, manager of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ reducing harmful fisheries subsidies program, is “cautiously optimistic that WTO members will set aside their political differences and do the right thing.”
“Many WTO members have indicated they genuinely want a deal, and momentum has increased in recent days driven in part by their realization that they are tantalizingly close to reaching one,” Jarret said.
Major remaining issues remain unresolved, but “none are impossible to overcome,” Jarrett told SeafoodSource.
“Some of the more complex issues – for example, special and differential treatment, such as transition periods, that could be provided to developing countries under article five of the agreement – may take more time than others to resolve in the weeks leading up to the ministerial conference,” Jarrett said.
The urgency and intricacies of a deal haven’t featured in public discourse in China, home to the world’s largest distant-water fleet and biggest subsidy pay-outs. Even as Chinese negotiators have pledged their determination to forge a deal with the WTO, China’s state-controlled media and local governments continue to portray distant-water fisheries as a growth industry full of possibilities for Chinese operators, who have been increasingly restricted from fishing in China’s depleted domestic waters.
Fuzhou Lianjiang National Pelagic Fishery Base, which is being constructed in three phases from 2020 to 2028, will handle one million tons of pelagic fish imports, the Municipal Maritime Office told local media. The port – home to major players like Pingtan Marine Enterprise – has been marked as a priority project by the provincial government, which announced last month that it would stop handing subsidies to vessels fishing in local waters.
Similarly, a recent report in the Hainan Daily on another port development on the island province of Tanmen suggested that distant-water focused ports were encouraged by President Xi Jinping – who, when serving as provincial governor, encouraged the expansion of the Fuzhou fleet. On a 2013 visit to Tanmen, Xi Jinping told local fishing companies to “go to the deep sea, catch big fish.”
Photo courtesy of IVAN KUZKIN/Shutterstock
