WTO Members Must Work to Address Overfishing and Overcapacity

World Trade Organization (WTO) members must not lose momentum as they work to complete new rules to limit the subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity.

At the organization’s General Council meeting in Geneva in July, members failed to adopt the rules, which are the final part of a decades-long negotiation process intended to ensure sustainable fisheries and ocean health for generations to come (as envisioned in United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14), despite having come close to consensus on the new rules at the organization’s 13th Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi in February.

In 2022, WTO members reached a historic agreement curtailing harmful fisheries subsidies, which was the first global, legally binding framework to limit subsidies for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and fishing of overfished stocks, as well as subsidies to vessels that fish on the unregulated high seas. The 2022 agreement to limit these harmful subsidies still must be ratified by two-thirds of the WTO’s 166 members before it enters into force; to date, 83 of the required 110 countries have ratified the agreement.

As part of the 2022 agreement, WTO members also committed to continue negotiations on unresolved issues, including rules to curb subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity. Overfishing requires immediate attention from the WTO; according to this year’s State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report, published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the percentage of fish stocks being unsustainably fished has increased from 35.4% in 2019 to closer to 38% in 2021, the most recent year for which reliable data is available.

The draft text under consideration at the WTO explicitly lists types of subsidies that should be considered harmful and must be banned; these are subsidies that reduce the capital and operational costs of fishing, allowing boats to fish more and for longer.

The crux of the negotiations has been to balance prohibitions on large-scale fishers—often industrial fleets from developed or significant fishing nations—while also ensuring subsidies flexibility for developing countries that want to protect their small-scale fishing fleets. Some WTO members have expressed concerns that ending these fisheries subsidies would negatively affect their small-scale fishers, even though both the 2022 agreement and the proposed new rules specifically target harmful subsidies that damage the fisheries resources that small-scale fishers rely on.

The discussions surrounding the new rules are stalled on the number and extent of the flexibilities and exceptions to the rules. A failure to unlock the stalemate and adopt the new rules would place marine ecosystems, fish stocks and communities all around the world at risk of overexploitation.

That’s because if members are unable to reach consensus on the overfishing and overcapacity rules within four years of the 2022 agreement’s entering into force, that agreement would “sunset,” or expire, throwing decades of effort overboard.

WTO members should not let the sun set on their chance to reach a successful and meaningful end to their negotiations, and should agree—as soon as possible—on these further rules to curb fisheries subsidies that lead to overfishing and overcapacity.

Ernesto Fernández Monge and Megan Jungwiwattanaporn are, respectively, a senior officer and officer who focus on cross-campaign efforts within The Pew Charitable Trusts’ conservation work.