India is going to be present, promote artisanal fishermen’s interests, and facilitate the growth of the fishing sector at the next WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi, which will take place from February 26 to February 29. MC13 addresses that what is prohibited are fisheries subsidies that cause overfishing, putting effort and capacity into it.
The negotiations at MC13 are about cutting back on the development of overfishing, overcapacity, and catching subsidies, among others. The end goal is to improve the structure of the fishing industry. Nevertheless, India conceptually acknowledges that the fisheries subsidies indeed contribute greatly to the growth of the fisheries sector, but there are concerns as to whom the benefits of these subsidies go.
India supports the CBDR principle and their respective capabilities with a 25-year transition period for developing nations so as to enable them to mitigate the livelihood and food security crises among the poor.
The fisheries subsidies’ draft text released by the WTO in December 2023 covers the necessity for sustainable conditions on fisheries pre-subsidy of fish stocks, which seems the need of the hour for the future. While many fear that the new terms proposed may have a bias towards large industrial fishing nations, developing countries might therefore find themselves being compared unfairly.
Experts point out that the challenges exist in India to show credible sustainable fishing practices and urge the need for firmer obligations from those major subsidizers with a history of large-scale subsidies. Likewise, India offers its support for a phase-out of not only the de minimis threshold but also a special category of classification for economies that are not least developed or exempt.
On one hand, there is an anxiety about subsidies only being advantageous to financially strong fishers, while, on the other hand, the stakeholders insist on the importance of subsidies to sustain small-scale fishers toward economic sustainability. India embarks on MC13 with a keen eye to walk the thin line between fisheries subsidies and conservation of the wild fish stock. It will endeavor to prioritize artisanal fishers along with sector growth as it strives for a persistent role in fish trade at the global stage.
