World Trade Organization (WTO) members last week edged closer to an agreement, which would set new rules for the global fisheries industry and limit government subsidies contributing to unsustainable fishing and the depletion of global fish stocks.

During an all-day meeting last week with 104 ministers and heads of delegation, the WTO pledged to conclude the negotiations soon and certainly before its Ministerial Conference in early December, thus empowering their Geneva-based delegations to do so. The WTO Members also confirmed that the negotiating text currently before them can be used as the basis for the talks to strike the final deal.

The fisheries subsidies negotiations are a test both of the WTO’s credibility as a multilateral negotiating forum and of the trading system’s ability to respond to problems of the global commons.

In her remarks at the end of the meeting last week, WTO Director-General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala remarked, “I feel new hope this evening. Because ministers and heads of delegation today demonstrated a strong commitment to moving forward and doing the hard work needed to get these negotiations to the finish line. I applaud you for this. In 20 years of negotiations, this is the closest we have ever come towards reaching an outcome, a high-quality outcome that would contribute to building a sustainable blue economy.”

She made mention that one fundamental conclusion drawn from the meeting is that members are ready to use the text as the basis for future negotiations. A second takeaway from the meeting was that there is universal agreement about the importance of the food and livelihood security of artisanal fishers in developing and least developed countries.

Settlement on the horizon before Ministerial Conference

As such, the prospect for a deal in the autumn ahead of the Ministerial Conference has clearly improved. The negotiations on fisheries subsidies disciplines have been ongoing for nearly 20 years.

Although there has been recent progress thanks to the intensive work that led to the development of the negotiating text on which members are working, the lack of political impetus in the talks to close the remaining gaps inspired Director-General Okonjo-Iweala to call the meeting of ministers last week.

Among the thorniest issues to resolve has been how to extend special and differential treatment to developing and least developed country WTO members while preserving the overall objective of enhanced sustainability of the oceans.

Ministers said that the livelihoods and food security of poor and vulnerable artisanal fishers in developing and least developed countries were of great importance, as was preserving the sustainability objective of the negotiations.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate that one-third of global fish stocks are overfished and most of the rest is fully exploited. This is up from 10 per cent in 1970 and 27 per cent in 2000. Depleted stocks threaten the food security of low-income coastal communities, and the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable fishers who must go further and further from shore only to bring back smaller and smaller hauls.

Each year, governments hand out around $35 billion in fisheries subsidies, two-thirds of which go to commercial fishers. These subsidies keep at sea vessels that would otherwise be economically unviable. World leaders in 2015 made a fisheries subsidies agreement by 2020 part of the Sustainable Development Goals and trade ministers reaffirmed this pledge in 2017.

Valuable inputs came about from the discussions

Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, who chairs the Rules Negotiating Group overseeing the fisheries subsidies negotiations, said he had received some valuable inputs from the discussions. He now has greater clarity on the path forward and the next steps that would be required to harvest an agreement.

The Columbian Ambassador will be consulting with the Director-General and WTO members about charting the path forward for the next stage of the talks.

 “We have been given the ingredients to reach a successful conclusion; a commitment to finish well ahead of our Ministerial Conference a text that can be the platform for this final stage of the negotiations and fully empowered heads of delegations in Geneva. This represents a real success,” said Ambassador Wills.