Part one of the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s treaty to ban harmful fisheries subsidies finally came into force Sept. 15. WTO member states adopted the treaty in June 2022 following a grueling 21-year negotiation.

The agreement, dubbed “Fish One,” aims to improve ocean sustainability by banning government subsidies that support the fishing of already-overfished stocks and curbing those that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

“There are weaknesses and gaps, and there’s still work to be done, but this is the start of the WTO trying to have a positive impact on environmental sustainability,” Daniel Skerritt, a senior analyst at U.S.-based conservation NGO Oceana, told Mongabay via email.

The WTO had to split its effort to ban harmful fisheries subsidies into two parts in order to reach any agreement at all. The body requires full consensus to strike any deal, and its member states could not iron out their differences over subsidies that contribute to building fleets with capacity to fish unsustainably and other forms of overfishing. They decided in 2022 to leave these crucial issues for later in the interest of breaking the deadlock to agree on part one.

It took the required two-thirds, or 111 of 166 member states, more than three years to ratify Fish One — a milestone achieved when Brazil, Kenya, Tonga and Vietnam submitted their acceptances to the WTO on Sept. 15. A special meeting of the WTO general council in Geneva marked the occasion. The WTO had previously failed to seal any overarching multilateral trade deals since 2013. This is the body’s “first multilateral agreement with environmental sustainability at its core,” according to a WTO press release.

“The agreement is an historic and necessary first step as it shows that multilateral cooperation on ocean sustainability is possible,” Rashid Sumaila, an expert in fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, told Mongabay.

What are harmful fisheries subsidies?

More than one-third of the world’s fish stocks are already overfished, and another half are pushed to their maximum sustainable limit, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Yet since the turn of the century, governments have steered an estimated $400 billion into practices linked to overfishing, even as they pledge action on biodiversity and climate.

Each year, states channel about $35 billion in subsidies to the fisheries sector. More than $22 billion of this is classed as “harmful,” according to a 2019 Marine Policystudy. The top five spenders are China, the EU, the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

These so-called “harmful” subsidies, most often for fuel and fishing gear, make it possible to engage in fishing that would otherwise be unprofitable, enabling unsustainable catches and degrading marine ecosystems.

Coastal communities that depend on seafood for livelihoods, and the nearly 3 billion people the U.N. says rely on the ocean as their main source of protein, are hardest-hit when the ecosystems they rely on are degraded.

What does the agreement change?

The Fish One agreement prohibits all subsidies for IUU fishing. Whether an IUU fishing incident has occurred is to be determined by member states, for areas under their jurisdiction: Flag state members make the call for vessels flying their flags and intergovernmental bodies called regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) decide for areas and species they oversee, Article 3 of the treaty text states. This introduces “the ability for members to hold each other accountable,” Skerritt said.

Fish One also bans subsidies for fishers targeting fish stocks that are already overexploited. Whether or not a fish stock is overfished is to be determined by either the member state responsible for the fishing or the relevant RFMO, and it should use the “best scientific evidence” available to make the call, according to Article 4 of the treaty.

The treaty text prohibits any subsidies for fishing in the remaining areas of the high seas that are outside both states’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and RFMOs’ jurisdictions. It is unclear what body will adjudicate this.

All ratifying states are already obliged to report their fisheries subsidies to the WTO’s Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Fish One requires additional reporting to a new Committee on Fisheries Subsidies. For each geographic area they provide a subsidy to, ratifying members must now provide information on fish stock status, management jurisdiction, conservation measures, fleet capacity, benefiting vessel identification and catch data by species.

Gray areas

While Fish One bans subsidies for IUU fishing and targeting overfished stocks outright, “loopholes” are worked into the text that members will need to close for Fish One to be effective, Sumaila said.

When the status of a fish stock is unknown, Fish One urges “restraint when granting subsidies,” but does not ban them. A government could therefore simply switch its subsidies from enterprises targeting assessed stocks to ones targeting unassessed stocks. And there’s plenty of room to maneuver, as 35% of fish stocks may be unassessed, according to a 2020 paper.

Perhaps the most contentious caveat allows states to continue to subsidize fishing overexploited stocks “if they show there are sufficient management measures in place to facilitate their recovery,” Skerritt said.

For instance, governments could subsidize fishers targeting an overexploited stock where the use of selective fishing gear is required to reduce the capture of juvenile fish or non-target species, because the measure aims to help the stock recover.

However, the conservation measures and monitoring required to demonstrate sufficient management are beyond the financial reach of many less-developed states, so the treaty effectively reserves the right to subsidize exploitation of overfished stocks for richer nations, according to Ranja Sengupta, a senior researcher and coordinator of the trade program of Malaysian NGO Third World Network.

“This introduces a strong element of inequity into the agreement,” Sengupta told Mongabay via email.

Is Fish One equitable?

Fish One disadvantages less developed nations in other ways, too, according to Sengupta. “Many small [-scale] fishers are inadvertently caught in the definition of IUU simply because they are too small and may not have access to registration mechanisms,” Sengupta said, adding that in poorer countries “such mechanisms may not even be adequately in place.” She was referring to a category of fishers who use small, often traditional vessels and equipment, and while individually harvesting relatively small catches, collectively make up at least 40% of catch worldwide. They are distinct from industrial or corporate fishers, who use large, often technologically advanced vessels and equipment to harvest big catches.

Being unregistered or unreported is not the same as fishing illegally, although all three terms fall under the “IUU” umbrella, Sengupta said. Yet small-scale fishers “are treated at par with large-scale fishing [that] is actually illegal and definitely fishing unsustainably,” she said.

Many WTO member states asked for large- and small-scale fishing to be treated differently. Both this and requests to differentiate between illegal and unregulated or unreported fishing were “blocked repeatedly” by more developed countries, said Sengupta, who attended treaty negotiations.

What’s next?

“For meaningful impact, members will need to quickly conclude Fish Two, close loopholes, and ensure robust implementation, monitoring and enforcement,” Sumaila said.

To help less developed nations comply with Fish One and build the capacity necessary to undertake such intensive monitoring and reporting, the WTO set up the “Fish Fund.” It is crucial that rich countries “contribute as promised” if Fish One is to be useful, Sumaila said.

Donations and pledges from 17 member states so far amount to more than $18 million of the $20 million sought by the fund, according to the WTO press release. Developing nations can submit proposals by Oct. 9 for the first round of funding disbursement.

The chair of the fisheries subsidies negotiating group, Ambassador Einar Gunnarsson of Iceland, stated at a July 14 meeting in Geneva that he “unfortunately did not see any indication, nor pick up any signals, of a possible pathway” for concluding negotiations on Fish Two. No further meetings to discuss the quagmired second half of the agreement are scheduled, and Gunnarsson is stepping down from his role as chair, according to the WTO. It remains unclear who might succeed him.

Fish One coming into force kick-starts a sunset clause giving members just four short years to agree on Fish Two, Skerritt said. If they fail to do so, the entire treaty will be terminated.

“Whether [Fish One] will make a big change in the water, especially to the state of fish stocks, remains to be seen,” Skerritt said. “We need to see how well this agreement is implemented and how quickly members can come back together to continue negotiations on Fish Two.”

Banner image: Small-scale fishers unload buckets of fish from their boats in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Image by Asian Development Bank via Fickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

How will fisheries change in a hotter world? Experts share

Citations:

Sumaila, U. R., Ebrahim, N., Schuhbauer, A., Skerritt, D., Li, Y., Kim, H. S., … Pauly, D. (2019). Updated estimates and analysis of global fisheries subsidies. Marine Policy, 109, 103695. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2019.103695

Blasco, G. D., Ferraro, D. M., Cottrell, R. S., Halpern, B. S., & Froehlich, H. E. (2020). Substantial gaps in the current fisheries data landscape. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7. doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.612831

FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the editor of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.