The World Trade Organization reached an agreement on fisheries subsidies on June 17, prohibiting member countries from funding illegal fishing and fishing of overexploited stocks.
After decades of failed negotiations, this new agreement is a massive step toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 — Life Below Water. While this new agreement fails to address the “harmful” subsidies that fund overfishing, the WTO is committed to continuing its negotiation to restrict these programs.
This idea of “harmful” subsidies, however, overlooks the diverse conditions of fisheries worldwide. It ignores the important role government interventions play in the economic security and livelihood of coastal communities.
Using oversimplified terms, like harmful, to define subsidies can have real-life consequences. Ignoring the nuances of fisheries under the guise of “illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing,” for example, has already led to the criminalization of small-scale fishers.
As a fisheries economist involved in the 2011 WTO negotiations, and who has followed this issue since then, Wilf Swartz, Associate Professor, Marine Affairs Program at Dalhousie University, believes we need to have more nuanced discussions about the role of fisheries subsidies — even the nominally harmful ones — to avoid further marginalization of small-scale fishers.
Addressing social injustice within communities starts with recognizing their diverse histories, future goals, local management practices, governance structures and the sociocultural and economic roles of fishing in certain contexts.
The new WTO agreement improves global transparency by expanding subsidy notification obligations. Member states will be required to submit any information about new subsidies programs to the WTO, where the committee will assess them to ensure member states are complying with the new agreement. In order for the new agreement to be meaningful, this new notification mechanism must be publicly accessible.
Future attempts to restrict how sovereign nations support their domestic fisheries and coastal communities must proceed with caution. We must be aware of the limits in a top-down, international approach, and avoid unnecessarily constraining governments’ capacity.
We must ensure that the actions to control overfishing must not lead to further marginalization of small-scale fishers.
Now that the mandate for the WTO agreement on fisheries subsidies is embedded within the UN Sustainable Development Agenda, future negotiations must protect and enhance ocean equity. This starts with more nuanced conversations about so-called harmful subsidies.