News and Analysis • Volume 1 • Number 2 • December 2007

Cutting subsidies to save the fish

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Oceana, a campaign group seeking to protect and enhance the world’s oceans, visited Geneva in October to stimulate discussion on subsidies and sustainability. Oceana chief scientist Michael Hirshfield and board member and ‘Cheers’ star Ted Danson visited ICTSD, and answered some questions regarding their vision for a successful WTO fisheries subsidies agreement.

BioRes: To set the stage, what is the plan of action for your presence in Geneva?

Oceana: We are here to draw attention to the fact that global overfishing and unsustainable fishing practices have depleted nearly all commercial fish populations and degraded the ecosystems that support them. Nonetheless, many governments continue to provide significant subsidies to their fishing sectors. Fisheries subsidies amount to between US$30-34 billion annually, of which US$20 billion go directly toward supporting fishing capacity, such as boats, fuel, equipment and other operating costs.

Here in Geneva, we will meet with trade delegates, Geneva-based organisations and WTO Secretary-General Pascal Lamy to stress the fact that the WTO has a historic opportunity to eliminate harmful subsidies and regulate those left to ensure that they don’t threaten the sustainability of global fish stocks. In this regard, we’ve developed an action plan to stimulate debate within the Doha round fisheries negotiations.

BioRes: Could you please tell us more about your action plan?

Oceana: First off, we need to make it clear that our goal is the elimination of capacity-enhancing subsidies, which lead to increases in overcapacity and overfishing. That said, we recognise that there may be a need for some flexibility for developing countries. To that end, we want to make sure that any such subsidies meet the test of sustainability.

The action plan contains five main points. First of all, we have to make sure there are enough fish - subsidies should only be provided to harvest healthy resources. Fishing efforts must be kept within the maximum sustainable yield of the population, at a sustainable rate ensuring long-term productivity.

Second, fishing capacity must be kept at a sustainable level, and should be modest compared to the fish caught, otherwise the subsidies make no sense.

Thirdly, subsidies should focus only on fishing efforts within each country’s EEZ (exclusive economic zone). There are few places where there are extra fish – this certainly is the case for the high seas. There are already too many boats in the high seas, so it makes no sense to subsidise and develop more capacity to send more boats there.

Fourthly, a country should have at least a basic fisheries management system in place in order to be allowed to provide subsidies to its fisheries sector. Developing such a system is not rocket science, and can be done everywhere with relatively simple methods. There is no need for developing countries to develop sophisticated systems, such as those of the US. However, they need to be adequate to answer the first two questions above, and should be open to review by independent fisheries experts. Such fisheries management systems would include measures for setting total allowable catches for target and major by-catch species, monitoring and control measures, means to assess population sizes and fishing rates, for example.

Fifth, with regard to subsidies in developing countries to replace foreign capacity with domestic capacity, the same rules should apply.

BioRes: What subsidies should developing countries be allowed to provide to their artisanal fishing sectors?

Oceana: Although our preference again is for no capacity-enhancing subsidies at all, we understand that special treatment may be appropriate for developing nations, particularly those with smaller economies. Our overall test, as above, is one of sustainability.

Artisanal fisheries are certainly candidates for developing country subsidies. To ensure that artisanal or subsistence fishing does not lead to overexploitation of resources, it should be strictly defined to include only nearshore fishing that uses specific low capacity fishing gears and results in minimal commercial exploitation.

Small-scale or artisanal fishing activities are not automatically sustainable. It’s a question of the scale of the overall fishing operations. Therefore, the fisheries themselves will answer the question of what subsidies and fishing efforts are sustainable. The point is to address overcapacity, so the fishery will lead the way - the issue is not one of juxtaposing the big guy and the little guy. However, when it comes to so called small-scale industrial fishing, we would also look at the technical capacity to land fish. Fishing used to be a local activity, and the fish had places to hide, to reproduce. Currently, large factory ships employ 20 percent of fishermen, but process as much as 80 percent of the catch. Size and technical capacity, fishing power, matters. There are new technologies, large nets, practices such as bottom trawling that can easily vacuum up large amounts of fish. And there is a link between subsidies and sophisticated technology.

BioRes: How do you see aquaculture and subsidies in this area?

Oceana: It would be delusional to think that aquaculture could provide an easy fix to the problem of overfishing and depletion of fisheries. First of all, what you farm matters. Farming carnivorous fish contributes to the same problem, since the fish feed is produced from the wild fish catch. In addition, antibiotics and fish waste can lead to immense pollution problems. In our opinion, aquaculture should not be subsidised.

BioRes: If the Doha round negotiations on fisheries subsidies don’t succeed, is there a backup plan?

Oceana: Our emphasis is primarily on the Doha round. However, even if the round were to go into a freeze, the issue of overfishing is not going to go away, so we’ll have to deal with it at the national and regional levels. There may be other multilateral processes where the fishery issue could be inserted, but the Doha round really provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address unsustainable fisheries subsidies.