Fishing about and about fishing

 

FISHERIES SUBSIDIES:

 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 

For quite a while, the dragging talks over fisheries subsidies at the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been described as offering the greatest potential, as compared to other issues discussed there. Now, on a WTO meeting last month, some progress towards consensus was achieved. 

 

Downwards or upwards. The gist of the dispute that has been going on is between a 'top-down' and ’bottom-up’ approaches. The first wants to ban all subsidies with some exceptions for underexploited stocks; the other, supported by some East Asian countries, agrees to ban only those subsidies that may prop up overfishing.  There’s also a dispute about what is and what’s not the business of WTO, and what should and what shouldn’t be considered fishery subsidy, and consequent row about whether or not subsidizing infrastructure and fish processing industry could be allowed.

An FAO Guide says that a subsidy could fundamentally be any government intervention – or lack of intervention – that affects the fisheries industry and that has an economic value; in short, any direct or indirect payments and exemptions, is variously interpreted.

 

Another hotly disputed issue at WTO is whether or not developing countries

deserve a special and differential treatment (S&DT) that would allow them to support their fisheries sectors, as requested not only by less-developed Arican, Caribbean, and Pacific island countries, but also by some real fishing powers, like China, India, Norway and some others, with respect to their small-scale and artisanal fisheries.

 

Also, the issue of “access fees”, typical of EU, Japan and some others paying 3rd World coastal countries to allow their fleets to fish in the recipients’ waters, remained as debatable as ever. Access fees that are in fact a sort of disguised subsidy to such fleets represent an important source of revenue for some of the less-developed coastal and island states. 

 

Sustainability criteria. The objective of banning of subsidies to prevent overfishing and encourage good fishery management, creates a wide field for wrestling about how to define both. Here stepped in last year the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in a joint effort to produce guidance for the perplexed WTO member countries in the form of a 51-page brochure, entitled: Sustainability Criteria for Fisheries Subsidies: Options for the WTO and Beyond, and authored by D.K. Schorr and J.F.Caddy. 

 

This booklet represents an assembly of definitions, conditions, and criteria that might help the WTO negotiators to navigate among the reefs and rocks of the good, the bad, and the ugly subsidies. The authors set some basic postulations, such as, that any subsidies must be accompanied by good and responsible management, or that while abundant stock is not a good argument in favour of subsidies – depleted stock is a good argument against them.  

 

Accordingly, any subsidies are damaging to stocks (contribute to overcapacity and overfishing), except where stocks are significantly underexploited, and where the capacity of the subsidized fleets are much below a sustainable level and the affected fisheries are well managed. What’s truly good management can only be defined case by case against checklists, such as those of the FAO or MSC. Globally applicable WTO rules, therefore, both for domestic and international fisheries, can only ensure that the most obvious mismanagement is avoided and entail only certain minimum elements of good management. Those should at least comprise scientific assessments of stocks and fishing fleets capacity, (of which the authors list 5 optional sorts), controls over the above, as well as surveillance and enforcement. The criteria put forward by the authors as management-related make a very tall order, and I still have to meet a fishery able to satisfy most of them.  

Artisanal fisheries. The above mentioned issue of whether there’s a need for specific criteria  for subsidies for small-scale/artisanal fisheries must be resolved, before any consensus can be achieved at WTO. The authors, confine this sector to developing countries – a concept in want of re-definition - and reduce it to low-technology inshore fishing for self consumption and nearby local markets. I’m afraid that their solution for the S&DT for artisanal fisheries in developing countries won’t be acceptable, especially to those WTO members, who’d reject their very definition of the sector. 

 

The authors conclude by saying that while their criteria, if accepted, would impose restrictions on WTO members, those restrictions would vary according to the level of management in the different countries, the state of stocks, and the size and the technical level of the fishery.

 

What worries me is the inertial use of the MSY (maximum sustainable yield) and MSY-equilibrium, concepts that should’ve long been abandoned, for “reference points” or “benchmarks” for management. This, in spite of the authors’ own admission that “the application of MSY remains subject to significant international technical debate”. The problem is that in any fluctuating fishery, and most are, true MSY varies from year to year and there’s no reliable method for telling what an MSY would be the next year.  On the other hand, an “average MSY” may well be counter-productive whenever the trend of a multi-annual fluctuation is shifting. Scientists who honestly compared past MSY and the respective TACs prescriptions with corresponding actual stock assessments and/or yields found the results “humbling”.      

 

The authors’ approach to “special treatment” is taking chances with fisherfolk, while it isn’t ready to take chances with respect to fish stocks. As I mentioned here in July 2003, fishing fleets, both legal and subsidized directly or in a roundabout manner, or IUU ones, are poaching on artisanal fishermen’s native, traditional fishing grounds. I think that such local fishing people deserve support on the part of their respective governments, as well as the international community. Would it be too much to ask WTO, EU, and individual governments of countries whose fleets or capital are out to exploit coastal fish stocks traditionally fished by small-scale, individual fishermen-owners, of other countries, or of their own, to give the latter a fighting chance?