The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024 — the flagship publication of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations — observes that the world marine-capture fisheries production stood at 79.7 million tonnes (mt) in 2022. Developing countries accounted for two-thirds of this production, and 12 of them — China, Indonesia, Peru, India, Vietnam, Chile, the Philippines, Morocco, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh — contributed to 51% of this total. Developing countries, therefore, have a stake in fisheries management as much as developed ones.
FAO notes that the global marine catches peaked at 86.4 mt in 1996, and the share of marine stocks fished at unsustainable levels increased from 10% in 1974 to 37.7% in 2021. Fisheries subsidies have played a major role in enhancing fishing capacity and increasing fish production to the unsustainable levels being recorded now. This trend needs to be reversed to ensure marine fisheries remains a sustainable source of seafood, to maintain employment of fishers and fish workers, and to protect biodiversity.
Fisheries management, therefore, has to become a political priority in most parts of the world. While 92% of marine fisheries were under management plans in developed countries, only 60% of fisheries were under any such plans in developing countries, observes FAO in the report. There are overfishing pressures due to too many boats fishing with super-efficient gear, and logging long fishing hours without oversight.
More than 40 years down the line, all nations, including developing ones, must match their sovereign rights to explore and exploit living marine resources in their exclusive economic zones (EEZs) with the duty to conserve and manage these living resources, as required under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is a matter of urgency that countries adopt effective fisheries management and a precautionary approach to maintain fish stocks at biologically sustainable levels.
Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) made a first step in addressing the negative impacts of fisheries subsidies on fish stocks when they adopted the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS) in 2022. They are now negotiating new rules that are meant to discipline, more broadly, subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing.
The Additional Provisions on Fisheries Subsidies to address outstanding issues — discussed on July 22-23, 2024, at the WTO General Council, Geneva — proposed flexibility in regard to subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing, that is, if the notified fisheries management measures can vouch that stocks are maintained at a biologically sustainable level. The provisions also proposed exemptions from notification obligations for the least-developed and coastal developing members with a share of the annual global volume of marine capture fisheries production at, or below, 0.8%. All other members, including far distant water fishing members, were exhorted not to grant or maintain subsidies if no fisheries management is in place.
Also, exemptions were proposed for nationally defined small-scale and artisanal fishing (non-industrial), which is low-income, resource-poor or livelihood-enhancing in nature, accompanied by an obligation to notify its operational definition to the Committee on Fisheries Subsidies.
And finally, developing country members, other than those mentioned above, were altogether given an exemption for a protracted period of 16 years from the date of entry into force of these additional provisions (which is likely to take a couple of years from the date of concluding the negotiations).
In the face of inert political will for fisheries management, how can WTO, of all institutions, prime marine-capture fisheries management across the world to help restore, rebuild and maintain fish stocks? Under a WTO regime, how does a developing coastal member meet its fisheries-development needs?
While the AFS prohibits subsidies to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and denies subsidies for overfished stocks, the additional rules under negotiation would more generally require all fishing nations and entities to inerrantly agree upon the importance of fisheries management subserving all other goals. For this purpose, an innovative accountability framework has been proposed through a notification regime for fisheries subsidies, on the one hand, and for fisheries management, on the other. It makes effective fisheries management a common denominator in regard to fisheries subsidies for the most consequential marine capture fisheries of both developed and developing members in all maritime zones, including the high seas.
The accountability framework is innovative because it provides leverage to bring all fisheries-related interests under a management regime as determined by respective coastal or flag States, or their regional fisheries bodies (RFBs), as backstopped by the FAO.
Given the status of marine fish stocks, especially in developing countries, it is time to be prudent and accept the role that WTO is willing to play in persuading its members to make a paradigm shift towards conservation and sustainable use of marine living resources. WTO can certainly set in motion a process to bring about greater resilience of marine fish stocks that will help both people and the planet.
(This piece is by Sebastian Mathew, Executive Director, International Collective in Support of Fishworkers)