African Leaders Must Urge WTO Members to End Harmful Subsidies for Locals to compete – Fishermen

Mauritania’s waters are rich in biodiversity: More than 600 fish species live in the northwest African nation’s territorial waters. The fishing industry provides jobs for 180,400 people and accounts for up to 10% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

But that wealth of marine resources is also the reason that fishing fleets from foreign nations flock to Mauritania’s coast.

These vessels are often powered by harmful government subsidies that pay for fuel and other expenses, artificially lowering the cost of fishing and enabling fleets to fish in areas where it would otherwise not make economic sense.

One hundred thirty-five foreign vessels, primarily from Asia and Europe, traveled across the ocean in 2018 to fish in Mauritania’s waters, also known as its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), according to a new research-based tool created by scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. That kind of distant-water fishing is only possible because of government subsidies.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia estimate that governments worldwide give out $22 billion in harmful fisheries subsidies every year, nearly two-thirds of which comes from six countries and the European Union. About $7.2 billion of the global total—or one-third—goes toward distant-water fishing, according to UCSB’s tool.

Negotiations on fisheries subsidies

WTO negotiations on fisheries subsidies were launched in 2001 at the Doha Ministerial Conference, with a mandate to “clarify and improve” existing WTO disciplines on fisheries subsidies. That mandate was elaborated in 2005 at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, including with a call for prohibiting certain forms of fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing.

At the 2017 Buenos Aires Ministerial Conference (MC11), ministers decided on a work programme to conclude the negotiations by aiming to adopt, at the next Ministerial Conference, an agreement on fisheries subsidies which delivers on Sustainable Development Goal 14.6

SDG 14.6, part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015, affirms the WTO’s role in the global fisheries subsidies agenda.

SDG 14.6 targets “by 2020, to prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, and eliminate subsidies that contribute to IUU fishing, and refrain from introducing new such subsidies, recognizing that appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries should be an integral part of the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiation.”

Based on the mandate fixed under the Ministerial Decision from the WTO’s 11th Ministerial Conference, and the UN Sustainable Development Goal Target 14.6, negotiators are expected to secure an agreement in 2020 for disciplines eliminating subsidies to IUU fishing and for prohibiting certain forms of fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, with special and differential treatment for developing and least-developed countries.