Saving Seafood

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.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New WTO chief pushes for vaccine access, fisheries deal

March 2, 2021 — The new head of the World Trade Organization called Monday for a “technology transfer” when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines and urged member nations to reach a deal to reduce overfishing after years of fruitless talks as she laid out her top priorities after taking office.

Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian economist and former government minister, donned a mask and doled out welcoming elbow bumps as she took up her job at WTO headquarters on the banks of Lake Geneva. Still, she immediately set about trying to change the organization’s culture.

“It cannot be business as usual. We have to change our approach from debate and rounds of questions to delivering results,” she told ambassadors and other top government envoys that make up the 164-member body’s General Council.

“The world is leaving the WTO behind. Leaders and decision-makers are impatient for change,” she said, noting several trade ministers had told her that “if things don’t change,” they would not attend the WTO’s biggest event — a ministerial meeting — “because it is a waste of their time.”

Okonjo-Iweala, 66, is both the first woman and the first African to serve as the WTO’s director-general. Her brisk comments were a departure from the more cautious approach of her predecessor, Roberto Azevedo, who resigned on Aug. 31 — a year before the end of his term.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Globe

WTO fishing subsidies negotiations resume, with exemptions for developing nations a key issue

January 25, 2021 — World Trade Organization members have restarted negotiations on ending harmful fisheries subsidies, with the key issue of exemptions for artisanal fisheries and developing nations under debate.

WTO members reopened formal negotiations on fisheries subsidies as the heads of delegations met on 22 January in Geneva, Switzerland. The organization had hoped for a deal in 2020, but talks repeatedly stalled over the issue of special treatment for developing countries. Some developing countries involved in the negotiations have called for an exemption from any ban on harmful subsidies, after China’s claim to be classed as a developing nation created tension in earlier phases of the talks.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NGOs, WTO delegates label EU fisheries funding as harmful subsidy

December 16, 2020 — A EUR 6.1 billion (USD 7.4 billion) budget of the next European Maritime, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF) for 2021 to 2027 is drawing criticism from NGOs and a WTO delegate, who say it represents a harmful subsidy encouraging unsustainable fishing.

The package was agreed to in principle last week in Brussels by the European Union’s parliament, and the European Council, composed of member-state governments.

Read the full story at Seafood Source