First WTO deal on fishing subsidies hailed as historic despite ‘big holes’

theguardian.com:

After 20 years of failed negotiations, the World Trade Organization has secured a deal to curb harmful subsidies that contribute to overfishing. Conservationists and campaign groups welcomed last week’s agreement as historic, despite criticism of “big holes” in the agreement.

The deal was the first concluded in Geneva for all 164 member states of the WTO with “environmental sustainability” at its core, the organisation’s director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said in her closing speech.

Fishing subsidies are considered the biggest factor in depleting global fish populations. Without subsidies, much fishing on the high seas would not be profitable, including the most damaging trawling along the seabed, according to a 2008 study.

Pew Charitable Trusts, which has long campaigned with other organisations to end such subsidies, said the new agreement marked a turning point in addressing a key driver of overfishing, despite being pared back from its initial goals.

The agreement creates a global framework that limits subsidies for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, for fishing over-depleted populations, and for vessels fishing on the unregulated high seas.

It includes measures to enhance transparency and accountability for governments on how they subsidise the industry, and put down a marker to include other subsidies at later negotiations.

Closer analysis, however, revealed “big holes” in the agreement, some organisations said. There are also practical problems of enforcement – which critics said would mean that the agreement would have a negligible effect on overfishing, which remained the “elephant in the room”.

Crucially, the agreement does not include a single reference to “capacity enhancing” or “harmful