Small-scale fisher organisations from across countries, including India, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Gambia and Indonesia, have submitted that the comprehensive agreement on curbing overcapacity & overfishing (OCOF) subsidies at the WTO, once concluded, will have serious implications for the future of small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples across the world.
They demanded that fisheries subsidies negotiations should be kept out of the WTO, and any negotiations should be brought to the Committee of Fisheries under the mandate of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Sub-Committee on Trade, which has the expertise to deal with policy decisions related to fisheries and small-scale fishers .
“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),” per a statement endorsed by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples and World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers after the recent SSF Summit and Committee on Fisheries meeting in Rome.
The two international organisations bring together national organisations of traditional small-scale fishing communities across the world, including India.
“We note that while it is agreed that the exempted category will be nationally determined, these activities should not be `industrialised’, This still poses major challenges in terms of clear definitions that clearly excludes small-scale fishers. Without clarity, such designations by governments may be subject to disputes that developing countries will not have the resources to fight,” the statement noted.
An agreement to prohibit subsidies for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, as well as subsidies for fishing overfished stocks and fishing in the unregulated high seas, has already been signed by WTO members in 2022.
Attempts are now on to speedily conclude an agreement on disciplining over capacity over fishing (OCOF) subsidies the scope for which is much larger and could hit small fishers much more.
The identified subsidies for disciplining include subsidies for construction, acquisition and modernisation of vessels; purchase of fishing gear and related machinery; fuel, ice or bait; insurance and income support during seasonal closures.
Earlier this month, India had rejected the draft text circulated by the chair of the WTO negotiations on curbing overcapacity & overfishing subsidies arguing that the special & differential treatment (SDT) provisions for its fishing communities, which include 9 lakh small fishers, needed to be stronger.
New Delhi also submitted against allowing large-scale industrial fishing nations the flexibility to perpetuate their unsustainable subsidies and “unfair burdening” of developing nations. India is one of the largest fish producers in the world but its subsidies are little compared to China, the EU, the United States, South Korea and Japan, and are estimated at less than $15 per fisher annually.
The fisher organisations underlined that the WTO was aiming to discipline subsidies that contribute to harmful and unsustainable fishing aggravating the rapid deletion of marine resources based on SDG mandate provided by SDG 14.6 which clearly aim to reign in large, in particular industrial scale fishing, including deep-sea fishing and fishing in distant waters. The implication of the SDG 14.6 mandate is also that cutting such subsidies should in fact conserve fish stocks for small-scale fishers who are not creating the problem, but bear a disproportionate cost in terms of both their livelihoods and food security.
“However, as the current situation with the current text stands, contrary to our expectations from this agreement, we do not see effective disciplines on those responsible for the state of the oceans today. On the other hand, exemptions for small-scale fishers across developing countries is being restricted by imposing irrational conditionalities,” the statement noted.