May 13, 2021 — Taiwan’s lucrative fishing industry has come under fire for subjecting its migrant workforce to forced labour and other abuses, contrasting with the government’s promotion of the democratic island as a regional human rights beacon.
WTO DG fixes July ministerial meeting on over-fishing rules
May 11, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organization plans to host a ministerial meeting on July 15 where she hopes an agreement can be reached on cutting fisheries subsidies after 20 years of talks, a document showed on Monday.
Governments including major subsidisers China, the European Union and Japan spend billions of dollars a year to prop up their fishing fleets, contributing to over-fishing that is decimating wild stocks. The WTO was tasked by world leaders in 2015 with striking a deal to roll them back but missed a key deadline last year. read more
Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who took charge of the global trade watchdog in March, has made fisheries a top priority and urged ministers in an invitation letter seen by Reuters “to find the common resolve and spirit of compromise that the WTO needs to bring these twenty-year-plus negotiations to a successful conclusion at this meeting”.
Intensive negotiations will continue in Geneva with the chair of the talks, Santiago Wills, expected to issue a fourth version of the draft agreement this week.
France, UK escalate fight over post-Brexit fishing access
May 6, 2021 — The row between the United Kingdom and France over post-Brexit fishing rights continues to escalate.
On Thursday, 6 May, dozens of French fishing boats set off for Saint Helier, the main port of Jersey, a British Crown dependency, threatening to mount a blockade. In response, the U.K. sent two Royal Navy gunboats to keep watch. Fishing crews set off flares, sounded their horns and displayed banners. The two sides currently remain in a stand-off, and thus far, the protest has remained peaceful.
European fisher advocates push for prioritized COVID-19 vaccine access
May 3, 2021 — The European Commission and European Union member states should develop a specific COVID-19 vaccination protocol for fishers, which also adapts and prioritizes their access to the vaccine, thereby keeping “essential fishing operations running,” according to the European fisheries association Europêche and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF).
In a press release, Europêche and ETF said that fishers are regarded as essential workers and this, along with the “particularities” of their workplaces and working patterns, needs to be taken into consideration.
Seafood industry angered by UK-Norway fisheries deal collapse
May 3, 2021 — The bilateral fisheries agreement negotiations between Norway and the United Kingdom that ended with no deal reached between the two nations on Thursday, 29 April has sparked uproar in the regional seafood industry.
While both sides said that they worked hard to secure a deal, the countries said their positions continued to be too far apart to reach an agreement for 2021. Talks had been ongoing since January.
Brazil to share vessel-tracking data with Global Fishing Watch
April 30, 2021 — Global Fishing Watch (GFW) has signed an agreement with Brazil to publish its vessel-tracking data.
Brazil is the sixth Latin American nation to sign a data-sharing agreement with GFW, a partnership between Google and the advocacy groups Oceana and SkyTruth, joining Peru, Panama, Chile, Ecuador, and Costa Rica.
WTO Chief Sees Fisheries Deal as Key to ‘Watershed’ Year
April 28, 2021 — The world’s most important trade negotiation this year centers on a deal aimed at saving the world’s fisheries.
Back in 2015, global leaders tasked the World Trade Organization with ending excessive and illegal fishing. The idea was to eliminate government subsidies that incentivize companies to deplete the world’s fish stocks and threaten coastal economies.
But year after year, deadline after broken deadline, WTO negotiators failed to secure such an agreement.
This year it sounds different.
“It’s like a watershed year — we have to deliver some successes,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Monday at a European Commission trade conference. She then recited her 2021 agenda with a fisheries deal atop the list.
A failure to conclude a fisheries deal would show that the WTO lacks credibility and is incapable tackling the more pressing problems of the modern global trading system. Okonjo-Iweala sees it as a way to signal to the world that the WTO is back.
There’s one big problem.
China, India and other developing nations are more focused on carving out exemptions than agreeing to enforceable disciplines that would help foster the sustainability of the world’s fish stocks.
July moment of truth for WTO fishery subsidy talks
April 28, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organisation is hoping to present a final text of a deal on ending harmful fishery subsidies to a virtual meeting of trade ministers in July.
A series of meetings in April between heads of delegations focused on several key issues which remain to be resolved, including potential exemptions for subsidies to subsistence or small-scale fishing; due process for determining illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; and the approach to the prohibition of subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing.
Pandemic accelerates major shifts in China’s seafood marketplace
April 27, 2021 — Long a proponent of sourcing more seafood from overseas, China’s central government has shifted its strategy in response to pressures related to COVID-19.
China continues to encourage seafood imports, which have long been seen as a means of dampening consumer price inflation. Recently, China reduced the tariff on frozen cod from 7 percent to 2 percent, while duties on ribbonfish, frozen crab, and frozen small shrimp were also reduced from 7 percent to 5 percent. The rate on live or fresh abalone imports dropped from 10 percent to 7 percent. The biggest cut was for “fertilized fish eggs,” which went from 12 to zero percent. Chinese import taxes for most seafood range from 5 percent to 7 percent, while VAT is charged at 9 percent.
WTO’s Okonjo-Iweala calls for July deadline to fishing subsidy talks
April 19, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has suggested difficult talks on ending harmful fishery subsidies should be concluded by July.
In an effort to inject some urgency to the talks, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala pleaded with negotiators in Geneva, Switzerland, to maintain a sense of urgency.
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