New Zealand’s efforts to ban harmful fishing subsidies are to be praised, writes Mark Peart.
The public and political furore over the now discarded Trans Pacific Partnership (of which New Zealand was a founding proponent) masked the true extent to which regional and multilateral trade liberalisation can be a force for good.
The revised TPP now goes by the much clunkier moniker of Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The revised deal has been lauded by Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker as an improvement on the old TPP, because it contains much greater benefits for New Zealand, particularly improved agricultural market access.
The intent of this piece, however, is not to try to analyse the new agreement in its entirety, but instead focus on one unheralded, yet important element on which government trade negotiators have spent the past 20 years trying to achieve regional and multilateral agreement.
Supported by the NGO community, they have tenaciously led international efforts to ban harmful fishing subsidies which critics have long argued exacerbate overcapacity in global fishing fleets and encourage overfishing.
These efforts began in the late 1990s at the then trade and environment committee of the World Trade Organisation in Geneva, where they received zero support. It was not until 2001 that the proposal became part of the WTO's newly launched Doha trade round. No fewer than seven abortive attempts have been made by New Zealand and other nations to reach consensus on draft texts dealing with the subsidies. However, this work now forms part of a draft ''compilation text'' which WTO ministers will consider in Buenos Aires this week.
Remarkably, the prospects for an agreement to be reached at all at this ministerial meeting seem better than ever. They have been bolstered by the inclusion in the CPTPP of a prohibition on granting or maintaining subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing or that negatively affect overfished stocks.
Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) cites this as a ''meaningful contribution'' to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 (on fish subsidies and addressing collapsing fishing stocks before 2020); it is this success which is fuelling the growing confidence that similar agreement can be reached in Buenos Aires by the much larger group of WTO ministers. The significance of this is undeniable, given the glacial pace at which such negotiations usually proceed. Getting an agreement on paper is one thing, achieving real action will require real action on the part of the signatories, especially given the looming 2020 deadline.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), close to 31% of the world's marine fish stocks are now depleted and overexploited.
Fish products are one of the world's most highly traded commodities, and subsidies distort this trade, particularly since fishing industries from many of the world's smaller states cannot afford to compete with large, heavily subsidised fleets.
The subsidies are a development issue, particularly in the Pacific, with subsidies contributing to there being too many vessels, depleting one of the most significant resources available to many Pacific Islands.
New Zealand has a long history of working with other countries to address fisheries subsidies, but in the process fish stocks have declined while subsidies increase.
An estimated $US30billion ($NZ43.17billion) a year is shelled out in fishing subsidies, and the Economist estimated earlier this year that seven in every 10 dollars doled out to fleets comes from rich nations. The WTO, having spent a lot of time working out which subsidies contribute to harmful fishing practices, puts the figure at 60%.
UNCTAD secretary-general Mukhisa Kituyi says the harmful subsidies compound the problem of overfishing because they make it cheaper for industrial fishing fleets to operate further from their ports and outcompete small-scale fishermen.
''We urgently need a [multilateral] agreement that regulates harmful fisheries subsidies and cracks down on unfair competition in our seas,'' Dr Kituyi said.
''The trade community has a responsibility to safeguard fisheries resources, and protect the livelihoods of the billions of people around the world who rely on fish for food and income,'' he said.
Despite the time it has taken, UNCTAD sees the development of the draft WTO text as a ''significant step forward'' towards building international consensus on the issue.
If New Zealand negotiators, having achieved the first leg of the double with the fishing subsidies issue included in the CPTPP, can help clinch the second leg with the WTO in Buenos Aires, they will have achieved much.
A freelance writer, former ODT journalist Mark Peart reported on the fishing subsidies issue in the 2000s.
