Report Focuses on WTO
Negotiations and Reforms of Government Fishing
Subsidies
Geneva, 22 December 2010 - In a new report,
the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) emphasises the urgency of advancing
negotiations at the World Trade Organization
(WTO) towards an
international agreement to ban harmful government
fishing subsidies and to introduce new measures
to ensure the sustainability and future
viability of the world's oceans.
UNEP's new publication,
"Fisheries Subsidies, Sustainable Development
and the WTO" is a timely reminder that
the clock is ticking and that oceans cannot
wait. It reviews efforts to escalate fishing
subsidies reform within the global trade
body over the last decade, and focuses on
the hurdles governments now face to determine
which subsidies to stop and which ones to
limit.
In addition to providing
significant potential economic benefits,
fisheries are also an important source of
livelihood and food, serving as the main
source of protein for nearly a billion people
worldwide.
Yet, 80 per cent of
the world's commercial fish stocks are depleted
or have been fished beyond their biological
carrying capacity, and economic losses due
to over-capacity and over-fishing have been
estimated at US$50 billion per year. Government
subsidies have been recognised as one of
the primary causes of this excessive exploitation,
which in turn has threatened the integrity
of the marine environment.
"This is an enormous
waste of natural capital and it is threatening
food security, development and the marine
habitat," said Steven Stone, Chief
of UNEP's Economics and Trade Branch. "These
harmful fisheries subsidies run contrary
to the very ethos of a Green Economy, which
promotes investing in the environment as
an engine for economic recovery and sustainable
growth," he added.
The UNEP publication
underscores why government subsidies for
the fishing sector must be more transparent
and accountable if the rules agreed by the
WTO are going to be effective. It outlines
several challenges that must be addressed,
including defining the scope of the subsidy
prohibition, identifying exceptions that
will be allowed, ensuring special and differential
treatment for developing countries, and
establishing fishery management requirements.
It also urges all countries to take action
to reform their own subsidy practices.
The publication is a
comprehensive reference manual which provides
a historic overview, synthesis and analysis
of key issues regarding fisheries subsidies
reform and the current development of fisheries
subsidies negotiations at the WTO.
It also contains country
experiences from Ecuador, Norway and Senegal,
which illustrate the impact of subsidies
and reform processes. Accompanying the manual
is also a CD-ROM containing additional relevant
source material from other organisations.
UNEP has played a leading
role in generating policy-relevant analysis
and in facilitating effective dialogue for
policy-making between the trade and fisheries
communities. Currently, the UN organization
is assisting by feeding the outcomes of
its country studies and international workshops
on the impacts of fisheries subsidies into
the ongoing WTO negotiations, which will
help to ensure that these discussions are
consistently based on sustainability criteria.
Notwithstanding the
critical phase of the current negotiations
and the many questions that need to be resolved,
the report illustrates how fisheries subsidies
reform has the potential to become one of
the most important international efforts
to achieve environmental, economic and development
coherence at the global level.
