The world’s most important trade negotiation this year centers on a deal aimed at saving the world’s fisheries. Back in 2015, global leaders tasked the World Trade Organization with ending excessive and illegal fishing. The idea was to eliminate government subsidies that incentivize companies to deplete the world’s fish stocks and threaten coastal economies. But year after year, deadline after broken deadline, WTO negotiators failed to secure such an agreement.
This year it sounds different. “It’s like a watershed year — we have to deliver some successes,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Monday at a European Commission trade conference. She then recited her 2021 agenda with a fisheries deal atop the list. A failure to conclude a fisheries deal would show that the WTO lacks credibility and is incapable tackling the more pressing problems of the modern global trading system. Okonjo-Iweala sees it as a way to signal to the world that the WTO is back.
There’s one big problem. China, India and other developing nations are more focused on carving out exemptions than agreeing to enforceable disciplines that would help foster the sustainability of the world’s fish stocks. But there are two signals that may provide hope for advocates of a fisheries accord.
The first is the fact that the new director-general is both motivated to close the deal and willing to apply strong political pressure on trade ministers to get it across the finish line. Last week, Okonjo-Iweala said she plans to host a virtual meeting in July where she hopes the world’s top trade officials can review and ideally agree to a final text. The second signal is fact that President Joe Biden’s top trade official recently said one of her top goals is to use trade to help address environmental challenges. In a speech in Washington this month, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai specifically called WTO talks a “critical” tool for addressing the global problem of overfishing. These are positive signals for the Geneva-based organization, which has struggled to broker multilateral agreements for a couple of decades. And as Okonjo-Iweala said, “20 years is enough.”