BLOG: WTO-MC13, Pacific says WTO negotiation process must deliver a fair outcome.

PIF, Geneva, 20 February, 2024: World Trade Organisation (WTO) fisheries negotiations are at an advanced stage as the high level WTO Ministerial Conference draws closer, but there is concern that nothing in the current draft agreement aims directly to force cuts in harmful fisheries subsidies.

“This is not good enough,” says Luke Daunivalu, Fiji Ambassador, and Coordinator for the Pacific group in Geneva. “We must raise the bar higher so that the big subsidisers directly lower subsidies. This is a sustainability agreement. The fish can’t wait.”

Daunivalu and others advising Pacific delegations to the WTO Ministerial Conference from 26-29 February 2024 are concerned that the current shape of the agreement doesn’t include a commitment to reduce subsidies.

They say as it looks now, the disciplines to prohibit harmful subsidies are still weak and may not lead to any cuts – only requiring the large subsidisers to provide certain information to a committee. This will allow the largest subsidisers to keep supporting the industry as long as they can show that their measures seek to keep fish stocks at biologically sustainable levels.

Better transparency and management of fish stocks won’t be enough to comply with the mandate of negotiations or of the Sustainable Development Goals.

There is concern that with ample resources and legal expertise, large distant-water fishing nations may easily be able to convince any WTO committee that they’re trying to maintain stocks in a reasonable state.

“An agreement aimed at transparency and better notifications at the WTO can easily be circumvented,” says Ambassador Daunivalu. The richer nations that provide higher subsidies have the funds, time and legal expertise to prove their case at a WTO committee.

The Pacific already manages its stocks better than most regions and doesn’t need extra oversight from the WTO, he says. The Pacific is the last ocean where all tuna stocks remain healthy, and Pacific Island governments aim to keep it that way.

Pacific countries do not want the WTO to interfere with their rights to determine the terms of access by foreign fishing vessels to their exclusive economic zones as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Management practices should be left to the region to decide.

Pacific island officials have been working hard for the past year in Geneva to negotiate a favourable outcome for the region. Ministers, diplomats and senior officials from the Pacific’s six WTO member countries will travel to Abu Dhabi for the Ministerial Meeting at the end of February, where they hope to deliver an agreement that commits the big subsidisers to meaningful cuts and defends Pacific interests.

This is a make-or-break moment. Any agreement struck now will decide the future of the world’s fisheries – and it should be one where the world’s richest nations no longer hand out billions a year to empty the seas of fish. In the Pacific, nothing less than the environment, economy, and livelihoods is at stake. 

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