Small-scale fisher organisations from The Gambia, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Ecuador have asked fisheries subsidies negotiations to be kept out of the World Trade Organization, arguing that the ongoing negotiations on curbing overcapacity and overfishing (OCOF) subsidies are “unfair and unbalanced”.
They said that the exemptions for small-scale fishers across developing countries are being restricted by imposing irrational conditionalities.
The World Forum of Fisher Peoples and World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers have raised concerns at the negotiations which seek disciplines on subsidies such as those for construction, acquisition and modernisation of vessels.
“Our biggest concern lies with the very limited special and differential treatment provision that proposes exemption for small-scale fishing across developing countries (in the draft text),” the two-organisation said in a statement after the recent SSF Summit and Committee on Fisheries meeting in Rome.
Special and differential treatment (S&DT) allows developing and poor countries benefits such as longer time to implement agreements and binding commitments.
“We are aware that the comprehensive agreement, once concluded, will have serious implications for the future of small-scale fishers and Indigenous peoples across the world,” the organisations said in a statement.
They sought the negotiations to be moved to the Food and Agriculture Organization from the WTO.
The ongoing negotiations also seek to put in place disciplines for purchase of fishing gear and related machinery, fuel, bait, insurance and income support during seasonal closures.
As per the statement, the sustainability exemption clause in the draft agreement text is going to allow advanced fishing countries that have the ability to monitor and make the necessary notifications, to escape any commitment to cut subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing.
“This also discriminates against poorer countries who do not have such monitoring and notification capacity and therefore cannot make use of this clause even if they are actually fishing sustainably,” they said.
The two organisations also said that for the proposed disciplines on subsidies tied to distant-water fishing, governments will only have to try not to provide them unless they can prove the fishing undertaken is sustainable. This, they alleged, provides a loophole that will help maintain the status quo and perpetuate the current state of “very concentrated control over our oceans and marine resources”.
