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I am making this statement on behalf of the following Members: Argentina, Australia, Chile, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and the United States.
Context
For all of us, an ambitious outcome on fisheries subsidies is a key element of the Rules negotiations and to our consideration of an outcome to the Doha Round more broadly.
There is clearly a great deal of concern about the overall state of play in the Doha Round at this time, but this should not distract us from the perilous state of world fisheries resources. We must not let a lack of progress elsewhere in the Round dampen our resolve to tackle fisheries subsidies. The issue is simply too important.
Addressing the environmental, economic and development challenges facing us in the context of fisheries subsidies requires significant commitment by all of us.
The imperative of a meaningful outcome in these negotiations is even starker now than it was when Ministers mandated such an outcome when they launched the Doha Round almost 10 years ago. The FAO’s 2010 State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report notes that around 85% of global fisheries are either fully or over-exploited. Of these, 32% are over-exploited, depleted or recovering; this combined percentage is the highest ever recorded.
From an economic perspective, Chairman, this situation is cause for serious concern; not only is it clear that a large proportion of global stocks are yielding less than their maximum potential production owing to excess fishing pressure, but there is a real concern that fishers will be unable to capture the minimum production necessary to continue the fishing activity, thereby resulting in serious consequences for coastal communities worldwide.
Subsidies are at the core of the problem. The World Bank, in its 2008 report entitled “Sunken Billions”, estimates that the economic losses in the global marine fisheries industry, resulting from inefficiencies (including subsidies) and overfishing add up to some US$50 billion per year. The same report confirms that “by creating perverse incentives for greater investment and fishing effort in overstressed fisheries, input subsidies tend to reinforce the sector’s poverty trap.”
From a development perspective, the livelihoods of some of the world’s most vulnerable communities depend on our achieving effective disciplines on the subsidies which deplete the fish stocks on which those communities rely. The very real possibility that coastal fisheries may become too scarce to fish would be disastrous.
The WTO’s credibility on trade and environment issues is at stake here, Chair. An outcome that appeared to discipline some subsidies, only to provide such extensive flexibilities that the status quo remains unchanged, would not be credible. A weak outcome calls into question the future ability of the WTO to tackle other trade and environment issues of global importance.
Ambition
An ambitious outcome is the only way for us to effectively deliver on our mandate. For fish, ambition in our minds means a strong prohibition and meaningful disciplines that commit all members, not least major subsidising nations, whether developed or developing. Ambition means an outcome that takes appropriate account of the trade as well as the environmental impacts of fisheries subsidies.
Chair, we endorse the architecture and ambition of the Chair’s 2007 text. That text builds upon the solid structure of the SCM Agreement and preserves its basic concepts and principles, consistent with the Doha mandate.
The 2007 text establishes a strong, comprehensive prohibition that minimises the risk that subsidies will simply be re-labelled and continue to flow. Importantly, it prohibits subsidies that are given to fish overfished stocks, subsidies for which we have not heard any justification.
The text also includes important provisions on fisheries adverse effects, anti-circumvention provisions, transparency and notification requirements – all of which are core elements of a meaningful, credible result.
The text’s S&DT flexibilities go in the right direction, Chair. Developing countries should have the ability to sustainably exploit their own resources. The flexibilities provided to them must be appropriate to the kind of fishery in question and conditioned on effective fisheries management. Some of us have put forward proposals to further discussion on this topic. In view of the many challenges associated with fishing activity on the high seas, the text appropriately draws the line at developing members’ EEZs.
We are pleased that other Members have also endorsed the 2007 text’s architecture in the proposals tabled since then. We are pleased that we have also seen convergence on several elements within the text. In our view, this means that any revised text must capture that convergence. It should set out the shape of meaningful disciplines that have a real impact on current subsidy practices. Simply recording a collection of proposed exclusions from the prohibition could have the effect of entrenching and widening gaps rather than bridging them.
Chair, this negotiation is about access to one of the most important, and most threatened, common resources on the planet. All Members, developing and developed, have a shared interest in this resource, and a collective responsibility to deal with the problem of subsidies which undermines the long term sustainability of this resource.
The agreement we build will be judged by the wider global community, now and through the coming decades, by how well we balanced the desire to fish today, with the need to fish tomorrow.
