Ambitious subsidy reform by the WTO presents opportunities for ocean health restoration

Abstract

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is in a unique position to deliver on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.6 by reforming global fisheries subsidies in 2020. Yet, a number of unanswered questions threaten to inhibit WTO delegates from crafting a smart agreement that improves global fisheries health. We combine global data on industrial fishing activity, subsidies, and stock assessments to show that: (1) subsidies prop up fishing effort all across the world’s ocean and (2) larger subsidies tend to occur in fisheries that are poorly managed. When combined, this evidence suggests that subsidy reform could have geographically-extensive consequences for many of the world’s largest fisheries. While much work remains to establish causality and make quantitative predictions, this evidence informs the rapidly-evolving policy debate and we conclude with actionable policy suggestions.

SubsidyExplorer: A decision-support tool to improve our understanding of the ecological and economic effects of reforming fisheries subsidies

“…However, many of these fisheries are also among the most highly regulated and are already benefiting from reduced exploitation rates. Disciplines targeting such fisheries are unlikely to yield effects as significant as those impacting fisheries that lack stringent control measures [ 22 , 45 ]. Accordingly, we find that proposals focusing on disciplining subsidies for fishing on overfished stocks can have meaningful effects compared to a BAU scenario, depending on the assumptions made with regards to defining an overfished stock.…”

“…Given the ubiquity of capacity-enhancing fisheries subsidies, reforming them will undoubtedly result in significant near-term costs for fishers. Therefore, WTO Members should also focus on developing mechanisms that would make this an equitable transition, such as repurposing existing subsidies and directing them to benefit fishers in a way that does not incentivize additional fishing [ 45 ].…”

International effects of fisheries support policies

“…MSY harvest in Asia for included stocks would be 32 million metric tonnes per year. Source: Costello (2020 [15]).…”

“…Each data point is generated by averaging the effect in each of the six regions of reducing the level of support in each category by USD 100 million from its baseline value. 15 That is, the model was run 30 times (five policy categories and six regions) and the average effect for each policy was used to produce the outcome indicators shown.…”

An informed thought experiment exploring the potential for a paradigm shift in aquatic food production

“…In fisheries, technological improvements are unlikely to garner more fish or lower prices. Currently the only ways to feasibly reduce prices for wild caught seafood are 1) more sustainable management, which is costly to implement and provides limited improvement even under the most optimistic scenarios (Costello et al, 2016), 2) even larger government subsidies that may have negative consequences for sustainability and trade (Costello et al, 2020b), or 3) development of mesopelagic fisheries (Alvheim et al, 2020), though such catch maybe more suitable as feed and the ecological impact of such exploitation is highly uncertain (Hidalgo and Browman, 2019). Regarding subsidies, if capacity-building subsidies end, a task actively being pursued by the World Trade Organisation (Costello et al, 2020a;Sumaila et al, 2019), some fisheries could be priced out of the market even sooner by similar but cheaper aquaculture or fisheries products.…”