Officials at Cambodia’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) mission in Geneva, Switzerland are negotiating a draft agreement on fisheries subsidies with counterparts from around the world.
Based on the mandate laid out in Goal 14.6 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, negotiators are tasked with securing agreement on disciplines to reallocate subsidies so as to reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, overcapacity and overfishing, with a strong emphasis on vulnerable species, ambassador Long Kemvichet explained.
The Cambodian mission seeks to ensure that the provisions of the latest version of the agreement nonetheless adequately support growth in the Kingdom’s fisheries sector and drive exports, he told a virtual briefing.
Negotiations on fisheries subsidies disciplines began at the WTO in 2001, and resolving the remaining differences are key to achieving success at the UN agency’s upcoming 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), which was rescheduled from December 2021 to an as-of-yet undetermined date later this year, he underlined.
Colombia’s WTO ambassador Santiago Wills, chair of the fisheries subsidies talks, submitted the previous version of the draft agreement to ministers on November 24, the UN agency said in a statement, noting that provisions in the text remain open for discussion.
Kemvichet issued a general call for relevant officials to work well with the mission on these and other negotiations at the WTO and similar organisations, including on topics such as small- and medium-sized enterprises, the environment, agriculture and investment, “which require internal coordination among relevant ministries to take full advantage for the nation”.
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