July 19, 2024 — Chinese officials recently announced the country will cancel subsidies to a number of distant-water fishing companies that do not meet standards set by the 2022 World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Fishery Subsidies.
China formally accepted the agreement in June of 2023. According to the WTO, it is one of 52 countries that have signed onto the deal; two-thirds of WTO member countries, or 110 in total, need to sign in order for the deal to enter into force.
February 27, 2024 — An updated draft text of an agreement to end harmful fishing subsidies has been presented for ministerial approval at the WTO’s Thirteenth Ministerial Conference (MC13), which opened Monday, 26 February in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.
WTO negotiators are seeking to build on a 2022 agreement that forbade the subsidization of illegal fishing by expanding the ban to subsidies that contribute to overfishing and fishing sector overcapacity at large. On 26 February, a further eight countries submitted their acceptance of the treaty, bringing the total to 70, with 110 needed for it to enter into force.
December 31, 2023 — World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators have struggled to conclude talks on ending harmful fishery subsidies, and as each day goes by, the 31 December deadline to agree on a draft text – set by Icelandic WTO Ambassador Einar Gunnarsson, who has been chairing the talks – looms larger.
The ongoing talks aim to build upon a deal the WTO reached in 2022, which prohibited subsidy support for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, by adding rules on subsidies that lead to overfishing and overcapacity in global fishing fleets.
July 19, 2023 — More countries, especially those with extensive coastal communities like the Philippines, are being urged to accept the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s agreement on fisheries subsidies to send a clear signal of zero tolerance on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUUF).
In a briefing with journalists under the Foreign Press Center’s international reporting tour, Monterey Bay Aquarium vice president for global ocean initiatives Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly stressed the importance of having more countries accept the agreement.
“It is very important for countries to sign on to send a very clear signal of zero tolerance for subsidizing fleets and economies’ efforts that are having some sort of egregious harm,” Kemmerly said.
This is a call to action from over 200 scientists globally, pleading with countries to accept the agreement to end harmful fishing subsidies.
“I would add that the NGO (non-government organization) community would like to see that broaden,” she said.
October 4, 2022 — Members of the World Trade Organization will shortly elect a new chair to handle the next phase of talks to end harmful fishery subsidies with an informal meeting of delegates taking place 10 October, where participants will map out a course for negotiations.
Santiago Wills, Colombia’s ambassador to the WTO, chaired the negotiations on the landmark agreement struck in June 2022, which prohibited subsidy support for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and limited fishing of overfished stocks. In a statement in late September, Wills urged WTO members to deposit their instruments of acceptance of the agreement as soon as possible so to allow it to enter into force. Hesaid work would continue on “advancing the negotiations” in preparation for the upcoming conference of trade ministers in December 2023.
June 30, 2022 — It has taken more than 20 years, but government representatives at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva have finally agreed on a deal to curb the harmful subsidies that are compromising fish populations and damaging the marine environment.
It is the first time the WTO’s 164 members have made a deal with “environmental sustainability at its heart,” said the WTO director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in her closing speech. “This is also about the livelihoods of the 260 million people who depend directly or indirectly on marine fisheries,” she added.
The agreement bans subsidies for vessels and operators engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and puts curbs on funding that supports the exploitation of overfished stocks. It also prohibits subsidies for fishing on the high seas – areas beyond national waters – if operations fall outside the jurisdiction of a regional fisheries management organisation (RFMO).
Read the full story at The Maritime Executive
June 21, 2022 — Representatives of ocean-focused non-governmental organizations have issued a mix of praise and criticism of an agreement struck at the World Trade Organization to prohibit subsidy support for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and limiting fishing of overfished stocks.
The accord, agreed to on 14 June, ditched several parts of the draft text presented to ministers and was characterized by WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as a “first but significant step forward” to curbing fleet overcapacity by ending subsidies for fishing on the unregulated high seas. Okonjo-Iweala said the reporting requirements included in the deal will “finally shed light on the actual level of subsidies going to fishing.”
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
June 20, 2022 — The group of 164 countries spent five days negotiating deals which included pledges on health and food security.
The partial intellectual property waiver deal for coronavirus jabs will allow developing countries to produce and export vaccines.
But it will only last five years, and excludes disease treatments and tests.
Director-general of the WTO Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the agreements, reached at a conference in Geneva, would “make a difference to the lives of people around the world”.
“The outcomes demonstrate that the WTO is in fact capable of responding to emergencies of our time,” she added.
The package of the two highest profile deals on the table – aimed at reducing overfishing and sharing Covid vaccine knowledge – was described as “unprecedented” by Ms Okonjo-Iweala.
June 17, 2022 — The World Trade Organization agreed on the first change to global trading rules in years on Friday as well as a deal to boost the supply of COVID-19 vaccines in a series of pledges that were heavy on compromise.
The deals were forged in the early hours of the sixth day of a conference of more than 100 trade ministers that was seen as a test of the ability of nations to strike multilateral trade deals amid geopolitical tensions heightened by the Ukraine war.
The package, which the WTO chief called “unprecedented”, included the two highest profile deals under consideration – on fisheries and on a partial waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights for COVID-19 vaccines.
The accord to curb fishing subsidies is only the second multilateral agreement on global trading rules struck in the WTO’s 27-year history and is far more ambitious than the first, which was designed to cut red tape.
Read the full story from Reuters
March 24, 2022 — The WTO has rescheduled its 12th Ministerial Conference for the week of 13 June, 2022, with a deal to limit fishery subsidies a key item on the agenda.
It comes as China has upped its subsidies to the country’s biggest state-owned tuna fishing firms while Greenpeace has sounded the alarm at the increased threat to marine biodiversity from growing distant-water fleets.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource