Ending harmful subsidies will benefit small-scale fishers

For many coastal communities around the world, especially in developing nations like ours, fish are essential for survival. They support robust livelihoods, provide protein and nutrition, contribute to food security, and anchor centuries-old cultures and traditions.

But all of that is at risk.

Rampant overfishing is depleting this valuable marine resource. In the mid-1970s, 10 percent of fish populations were fished at unsustainable levels, according to a 2024 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report. Now, nearly 50 years later, that number has almost quadrupled. In 2021, 37.7 percent of stocks were overfished. It is imperative that all of us — developed and developing nations alike — embrace sustainability and halt this spiraling problem.

Much of the world’s overfishing is powered by government subsidies. Of the $35 billion spent globally on fisheries subsidies each year, $22 billion are classified as harmful subsidies because they make unprofitable fishing profitable and increase fishing capacity to unsustainable levels, according to data published in the journal Marine Policy in 2019.

Industrial fishing by the largest subsidizers is primarily to blame. Eighty percent of the world’s $35 billion in annual subsidies goes to large-scale industrial fishing fleets, and only 19% goes to the small-scale fishing sector, including artisanal and subsistence fishers, according to research published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science in 2020.

Industrial fleets use many of those subsidies to build bigger boats, travel farther out to sea, and fish for longer periods, enabling them to catch more fish than is sustainable — often in other nations’ waters. Developing countries are often the destination of these industrial fleets. For example, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, and Mauritania are among the top five targets for distant-water fishing subsidies, according to 2018 estimates from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Competing against subsidized foreign fleets is difficult for developing nations, which often have limited financial resources to support our own fishing sectors. And when harmful subsidies incentivize excessive fishing pressure in or close to our waters, the marine resources that support our socioeconomic development and the well-being and livelihoods of large parts of our populations are under threat.  

We have seen the consequences of irresponsible subsidized fishing firsthand. Fishers in our countries are bringing in smaller yields and being pushed to fish farther from home, often in rougher seas, at great personal risk and cost. Families are spending more of their hard-earned money as low supply drives up prices. Harmful fisheries subsidies are jeopardizing the livelihoods and food security of our communities.

But there is a solution within reach. World Trade Organization (WTO) members are negotiating new rules that would limit these types of damaging subsidies. Finalizing these prohibitions is essential for protecting the health of the fish stocks on which so many coastal communities rely.

The draft rules, which would build on the 2022 WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, are intended to create an element of fairness currently missing in the global fishing sector. They should allow developing countries that have small fishing industries — and that provide only minor capacity-enhancing subsidies to their fishers, if any — to grow their industries with relatively less competition from other nations’ highly subsidized industrial fleets.

Crucially, the new WTO rules encourage a much-needed paradigm shift toward improved conservation and the sustainable use of marine resources in both developed and developing nations. In doing so, the draft provisions place a greater burden on countries that have more heavily subsidized and advanced fishing sectors, which has been a key demand from many developing countries during the negotiations. In its current form, all large subsidizers and fishing nations must accompany risky forms of subsidies with fisheries management. But developing countries are given time to establish their management structures, as they would be granted a transition period to prepare and ensure that fishers’ livelihoods would not be impaired. The latest version of the rules also goes to great lengths to ensure that least-developed countries, small fishing nations, and artisanal fishers in many developing countries would not be negatively impacted by the removal of subsidies — illustrating our negligible contribution to overfishing and, even more importantly, that our voices were heard during the WTO negotiations process.

As we and more than two dozen other developing nations said in a June communication sent to the WTO, curbing harmful subsidies is critical “for protecting ocean health, the livelihoods of fisherfolk, and the communities they support.”

At this year’s United Nations General Assembly session, world leaders adopted a Pact for the Future to improve global governance and cooperation for the benefit of future generations. They agreed that sustainable development should be a central objective of multilateralism and committed to taking “ambitious action to improve the health, productivity, sustainable use, and resilience of the ocean and its ecosystems.” The adoption of the new WTO rules is one of a number of actions that the international community can take to achieve this target.

Effective multilateralism and international cooperation were essential in achieving consensus around the 2022 WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies. We must recapture that spirit and finalize the new rules under negotiation at the WTO to curb harmful subsidies that drive overfishing and overcapacity. Our coastal communities — their livelihoods, food security, and way of life — depend on it.