Differential treatment

India must protect its interests in WTO on fishery subsidies

India has rightly conveyed to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that its move to seek amendments to the draft of the proposed agreement on fisheries subsidies should not be viewed as a tactic to delay or block this crucial pact. It is meant to make the accord more balanced by reining in huge grants being doled out by rich nations for exploitative fisheries and giving space to other countries to consolidate their fisheries sectors. The present text, which tends to safeguard the commercial interests of the developed countries, is unacceptable to India because it fails to uphold the much-needed sustainability of fisheries.

The basic objective of the global pact on fisheries subsidies, when the issue was first mooted during the WTO’s Doha ministerial meet in 2001, was to discipline or eliminate subsidies that encouraged illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The provision of special but differential treatment for developing countries was slated to be ingrained in it. However, the text mooted for negotiating this deal, as also its modified and updated versions put out from time to time over the past two decades, did not fully reflect the will to achieve the intended goal of ensuring responsible fishing to preserve marine fisheries resources. Going by the estimates put out by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nearly two-thirds of the $35-billion subsidies go to enterprises engaged in commercial fishing. On the other hand, the developing countries’ subsidies, just a fraction of it, are aimed mostly at facilitating livelihood security for the fisheries-dependent coastal communities. To correct this imbalance, New Delhi has proposed that the rich countries stop subsidising fishing in distant waters beyond their exclusive economic zones (EEZ) for 25 years. This would give time to the other countries to build their own sustainable fisheries capabilities.
 

The urgency of a binding accord on fisheries subsidies is evident from the FAO’s estimates that about 34 per cent of the world’s marine resources are already over-exploited. This represents a marked deterioration of the situation, considering that the extent of overfishing was hardly 10 per cent in 1970 and 27 per cent in 2000. This trend, if allowed to endure, would deplete the fish stocks, threatening the livelihood of traditional fisherpersons. Thankfully, the WTO’s response to the Indian proposal seems fairly positive. This was clear when WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stated at the end of her recent New Delhi visit that the Indian plea “deserved to be heard”. She also promised to place it on the negotiation table though, understandably enough, its adoption by the negotiators could not be guaranteed. 

For India, the issue of fisheries subsidies has special significance. The country has about 16 million fisherpersons relying almost solely on fishing for their subsistence. Many more are engaged in the value chain. The subsidy given by the government to this sector is quite meagre, barely around Rs 770 crore. It meets only a part of the cost of diesel and essential fishing gear. Consequently, most Indian fisherpersons are unable to operate beyond the coastal waters though the catches in this belt are now dwindling because of over-tapping. Almost the entire growth in fish production is coming from the inland fisheries (aquaculture). A favourable outcome of the global deal on fisheries subsidies is, therefore, imperative for the growth of Indian marine fisheries.