Negotiations have been in progress for almost twenty years, but the World Trade Organisation is finally confident that an agreement on limiting fisheries subsidies is in sight, following a day-long meeting in mid-July of ministers and heads of delegation.
“I feel new hope this evening. Because ministers and heads of delegation today demonstrated a strong commitment to moving forward and doing the hard work needed to get these negotiations to the finish line,” said WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the meeting concluded.
“In 20 years of negotiations, this is the closest we have ever come towards reaching an outcome — a high-quality outcome that would contribute to building a sustainable blue economy.”
WTO members pledged to conclude the negotiations soon and certainly before the WTO's Ministerial Conference in early December, and to empower their Geneva-based delegations to do so. Members also confirmed that the negotiating text currently before them can be used as the basis for the talks to strike the final deal.
World leaders in 2015 made a fisheries subsidies agreement by 2020 part of the Sustainable Development Goals and trade ministers reaffirmed this pledge in 2017.
Among the thorniest issues still to be resolved is been how to extend special and differential treatment to developing and least developed country WTO members while preserving the overall objective of enhanced sustainability of the oceans. Ministers said that the livelihoods and food security of poor and vulnerable artisanal fishers in developing and least developed countries were of great importance, as was preserving the sustainability objective of the negotiations.
Amb. Santiago Wills of Colombia, chairing the Rules Negotiating Group overseeing the fisheries subsidies negotiations, said he now has greater clarity on the path forward and the next steps that would be required.
“What we sought from ministers today was political guidance to help close these negotiations soon. And we did hear that guidance. We have been given the ingredients to reach a successful conclusion; a commitment to finish well ahead of our Ministerial Conference a text that can be the platform for this final stage of the negotiations and fully empowered heads of delegations in Geneva,” he said.
The Director-General said that delegations needed to prepare for an intensive period of line by line negotiations.
“The fisheries subsidies negotiations are a test both of the WTO's credibility as a multilateral negotiating forum and of the trading system's ability to respond to problems of the global commons,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned.
