Fishers organisations ask govt not to ratify ‘unequal’ WTO pact on fisheries subsidies

2023-07-24 16:19:11

As many as 43 civil society organisations and trade unions have written to the Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal stating that the fisheries subsidies agreement being ratified at the WTO will not be favourable for Indian fishing communities and that New Delhi should get together with other developing nations to ensure that the “unequal” pact does not come into effect.

“Many developing countries have a very large fisher population. Accordingly, they had argued that the comparison of subsidies should be on the basis of per fisher subsidy. Developing countries such as India, Indonesia and China may have a large amount of total subsidies but when it comes to per fisher subsidies, they are much below many developed countries in the list of subsidisers. However, the WTO agreement does not acknowledge this fact,” the letter addressed to Goyal points out.

The Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies was concluded at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the WTO in Geneva in June 2022 and it is being now ratified by members individually.

The letter highlighted India’s demand that there should be disciplines on non-specific subsidies (which are not specific to the fishing sector but general fuel subsidies rampantly used by rich nations as they are the ones that can afford it) was rejected in the negotiations and ignored in the final agreement.

Special and Differential Treatment provisions

Moreover, the Special and Differential Treatment (S&DT) provisions for developing countries and LDCs in the agreement were highly inadequate as they allowed a transition period of only two years from the date of entry into force of this agreement. This put developing countries and LDCs at a great disadvantage. “Many of these countries do not have the capacity to register small-scale fisheries under these provisions and two years is a very short grace period at the expiry of which the subsidies provided by developing countries and LDCs, including those to small-scale and artisanal fishers, would be subjected to WTO rules. In fact, developed countries have obtained ‘reverse S&DT’, where they do not have to cut their subsidies if they can show these as sustainable and replenishing fish stocks,” the letter stated.

The signatories of the letter include National Fishworkers Forum, National Platform for Small Scale Fish Workers, All India Fishers and Fisheries Workers’ Federation, All India Peoples Science Network, Focus on the Global South -India, TWN Trust India, All India Union of Forest Working People and All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), among others.

Instead of ratifying the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement, India should begin talks on the Comprehensive Agreement which is already mandated on disciplines for industrial fishing nations under Article 5 pertaining to overcapacity and overfishing, the signatories suggested.

This should specifically target the infrastructural subsidies which are overwhelmingly provided by the developed countries and thus need to be disciplined. “The negotiations so far failed to make a distinction between small subsidisers and large subsidisers. The latter are historically responsible for the destruction of marine resources and their role should be recognised and addressed if we are to move forward on sustainable governance of marine resources,” the letter said.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation,an estimated 34 per cent of global stocks are overfished compared with 10 per cent in 1974, indicating exploitation taking place at a pace where the fish population cannot replenish itself. Declining fish stocks threaten to worsen poverty and endanger coastal communities that rely on fishing. Roughly 39 million people depend on capture fisheries for their livelihood, per available data.