The World Trade Organization (WTO) has appointed Guyana Ambassador Leslie Ramsammy as the new chair of ongoing negotiations aiming to eliminate subsidies that lead to overcapacity and overfishing in global fishing fleets.
The negotiations Ramsammy now leads aim to strengthen a 2022 agreement that prohibits global subsidies supporting vessels engaging in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activities, fishing overfished stocks, and operating on the unregulated high seas.
The 2022 deal – also referred to as Fish 1 – recently entered into force after two-thirds of WTO member nations ratified the agreement, but attempts at creating a stronger follow-up deal have stalled on multiple occasions as negotiators have disagreed on several issues, including a proposed tiered system to target harmful subsidies, how to properly calculate a country’s fishery subsidies, and more.
Ramsammy is taking over the position from Icelandic Ambassador to the WTO Einar Gunnarsson, who chaired the negotiations for several years but stepped down in July 2025 due to lack of progress.
Ramsammy will now look to get the ball rolling in the right direction again, as negotiations will kick back up at the WTO’s biennial ministerial meeting, the upcoming edition of which is taking place in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in March.
Adding to the pressure to secure a strengthened deal is the fact that the 2022 agreement contains a sunset clause stating that a follow-up deal must be secured four years after Fish 1 enters into force or else the original deal becomes invalid.
With the 2022 deal entering into force in September 2025, the clock is now ticking on negotiators to strike a follow-up deal.
The Cameroon meeting in March represents the penultimate ministerial meeting before triggering the sunset clause, leaving little room for error at both the Yaoundé meeting and the 2028 meeting to follow.
In the meantime, the WTO, as well as other organizations like the Fisheries Transparency Initiative, are working on getting countries that ratified Fish 1 to start enforcing its stipulations.
