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Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Jul24/16) In a statement made public on 16 July, Groups of Small-Scale Fishers (SSF) expressed sharp concern that the “exemptions for small-scale fishers across developing countries [are] being restricted by imposing irrational conditionalities.” As reported in the SUNS, the chair’s draft text for addressing the OCOF subsidies appeared to be tilted in favour of the big OCOF subsidizers, who are regarded as being responsible for the global depletion of fish stocks, while unduly burdening small-scale fishers with stringent conditionalities/restrictions. According to the SSF group, “the sustainability exemption clause (Article A.1.1) is going to allow advanced fishing countries that have the ability to monitor and make the necessary notifications, to escape any commitment to cut subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing.” “This also discriminates against poorer countries who do not have such monitoring and notification capacity and therefore cannot make use of this clause even if they are actually fishing sustainably,” they emphasized. Expressing their fears, SSF said that on “the proposed disciplines on subsidies tied to distant-water fishing, governments will only have to try not to provide them unless they can prove the fishing undertaken is sustainable.” They said that the chair’s draft text (TN/RL/W/279) “provides a loophole that is more lenient than the general disciplines on subsidies going to fishing within a country’s own Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).” “Our biggest concern lies with the very limited special and differential treatment provision that proposes exemption for small-scale fishing across developing countries,” the SSF noted. They pointed out that “defining exemptions for SSF based on non-industrial characteristics does not amount to actual disciplines on industrial fishing, which are glaringly missing from the current texts.” The SSF said categorically that “efforts to bring in disciplines on large-scale or industrial scale fishing have been strongly and consistently resisted by countries which have used such fishing to establish their commercial domination over marine resources for centuries.” Noting that the “exemptions for LDCs and for developing countries which account for less than 0.8% share of global marine capture is welcome,” the SSF argued that “our concern is also that this again perpetuates the current power dynamics in the oceans.” The SSF maintained that “countries get exemptions, not if they fish sustainably (which they may not have the wherewithal to prove), but if they stay small and poor, and do not threaten the big powers.” The SSF also demanded that “fisheries subsidies negotiations should be kept out of the WTO, and any negotiations should be brought to the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) under the mandate of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Sub-Committee on Trade.” More disturbingly, the chair’s draft text on OCOF subsidies “is helping to maintain the status quo and perpetuate the current state of very concentrated control over our oceans and marine resources,” the SSF concluded. DG & NGR Yet, the concerns expressed by the SSF, also echoed by India, Indonesia, and several other developing countries, seemed to have “fallen on deaf ears” of the WTO’s Director-General, Ms Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the chair of the Doha Negotiating Group on Rules (NGR) which oversees the fisheries subsidies negotiations, Ambassador Einar Gunnarsson of Iceland, according to the statements they delivered at the Doha Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) meeting on 15 July. The full statements of the DG and the NGR chair, as contained in the restricted document JOB/TNC/13 on 16 July, failed to provide any well-reasoned answers. Instead, both their statements seemingly brushed aside the concerns over the asymmetries in the chair’s draft text, including the alleged “free pass” given to the big subsidizers engaged in distant-water fishing, and the allegedly burdensome notification requirements imposed on developing countries. After speaking somewhat eloquently on the “art of negotiation,” the WTO DG said, “as we heard from the Negotiating Group on Rules (NGR) Chair, Ambassador Gunnarsson, we are not negotiating with the Chair.” Without naming India and other countries which raised fundamental objections to the chair’s draft additional provisions on OCOF subsidies on myriad grounds, the DG said it “appears to me that the art of negotiation is being lost and is simply a sense of “here are my wants and if you do not give me those wants then this place is not working for me”.” It seems to be a well-established practice during the past three years that only the issues of major industrialized countries such as the United States and the European Union, as well as China are heard, while the issues raised by India or other developing countries are invariably given the proverbial “step-motherly” treatment, said people who asked not to be quoted. Under the current dispensation at the WTO, issues seem to be resolved only on the parameters set by the US, the EU and China among others, said a fisheries expert who asked not to be quoted. In her statement at the TNC meeting, the DG said: “So, today we are a bit stuck in many key areas in part because of this lack of negotiation” and “there is engagement but engaging is not necessarily negotiating.” Ms Okonjo-Iweala said, “If we are to remain resilient in the WTO and responsive in a changing world, then we must remain faithful to the organization’s negotiating DNA.” She said that “it is very common to take what is a global public good for granted and not to cherish it.” “That is why we lose the sustainability of our oceans” and, “that is why we have problems with climate change,” she claimed. The DG observed that, “We (members) tend to take the things that work and keep us going for granted and we do not cherish them.” Commenting on the need to rebuild trust, which is “widely acknowledged as a key ingredient for negotiating success,” she said, “I always come back to this issue of rebuilding trust.” FISHERIES SUBSIDIES Turning to the issue of fisheries subsidies, the DG said 80 countries would have ratified the Fish-1 Agreement (which was concluded at the WTO’s 12th ministerial conference in Geneva on 17 June 2022) by the time of the General Council meeting on 22 July. She thanked “Ambassador Gunnarsson not only for your report but for your effort and that of Members to advance the health of our oceans, and the livelihoods and nutrition of many millions of people in all parts of the world.” The DG’s above claim appears to be far from the truth, if one were to read the SSF statement issued on 16 July. Highlighting the NGR chair’s statement, the DG said that “the negotiations on fisheries subsidies is not like the usual one” and “the ultimate objective is sustainability and fish stock restoration.” “We are at the behest of the UN Secretary-General and the Sustainable Development Goals – trying to get at something that the world wants – not just our individual countries.” Significantly, the DG seems to have admitted that “by not closing this, we are not fully delivering SDG 14.6. I think people have forgotten that – this is a specific Sustainable Development Goal which the UN Secretary- General has asked the WTO to deliver.” Interestingly, the UN SDG mandate came from member states of the UN and not from the UN Secretary-General. The DG implored members “to compromise” and “the nature of compromise is that no one gets exactly what they want, but everyone gets what they can live with, and getting to this point is particularly challenging in a multilateral, consensus-based organization with 164, soon to be 166 Members.” Ms Okonjo-Iweala said that unlike other WTO agreements, the proposed Fisheries Subsidies Agreement (FSA) deals “with a global ecosystem which we are being asked to support.” She said that while many members want “to close”, “others feel that there is still work to be done.” The DG spoke about how the former fisheries chair, Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, who is now the director of the WTO’s General Council and TNC Division, was made the chair of the NGR. It is commonplace knowledge that Ambassador Wills was appointed by the former WTO DG, Mr Roberto Azevedo, under some rather controversial circumstances in Shanghai, China. NGR CHAIR Without delving into the alleged in-built asymmetries and open biases towards the big subsidizers, who are given an alleged “free pass” with circumventable notification requirements, the NGR chair seems to have played the “majority” card while seemingly turning a deaf ear to the fundamental objections raised by India and other countries. In his statement at the TNC, Ambassador Gunnarsson said that in his assessment, “the overwhelming majority of Members generally see the text as the basis for reaching a conclusion, even if some adjustments may be needed, and believe that we can use it to close the final differences soon and very possibly by next week’s General Council meeting.” Further, he argued that “most of these Members consider that the revised text represents a very delicate and fragile balance of interests, reflecting the many significant compromises made across a broad spectrum of Members throughout more than two decades of negotiations.” He said, “the disciplines, while far from being perfect or ideal, would still measurably improve the status quo, helping to stem the further depletion of fish stocks by subjecting the largest subsidizers to rules while providing appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing Members.” “On the other hand,” the chair said, “there were a few Members that raised such fundamental issues and concerns that it seems questionable if the text offers a path to consensus for them.” Without naming India, the chair said: “One Member in particular continues to raise issues that in fact go to the very premise of the work we have been doing, calling into question the negotiating mandate given to us by Ministers at MC12, and even seeking to reopen the Fish 1 Agreement, for which nearly 80 Members have already deposited their instruments of acceptance.” He admitted that “the three documents circulated by that delegation on Friday elaborate these issues in no uncertain terms.” It is, however, moot that if the chair accepts the issues that were elaborated by India “in no uncertain terms”, then, why is he allegedly being stubborn to deal with them analytically to resolve them, said people familiar with the discussions. While agreeing to “every Member’s right to raise concerns and to disagree,” the chair said: “No one can claim the moral high ground from another Member in this regard. But the question is, where do these differences leave us, both today here at the TNC and in the run-up to the General Council beginning in one week?” The issues raised by India are not meant for claiming “the moral high ground”, rather they are livelihood and genuine short-, medium-, and long-term issues raised by a country that did not plunder the high seas through industrial-scale fishing for the past many decades like the big subsidizers, said a fisheries expert who asked not to be quoted. The NGR chair admitted that “given the fundamentally different nature of these views from those of most Members, I am finding it increasingly difficult to see at this point how we can forge consensus based on the text in document 279, unless something significantly changes among Members.” By merely claiming that the FSA has “sustainable development as its underlying objective – not a classic trade agreement, but one aimed at ending harmful and unsustainable subsidies, halting the devastating deterioration of fish stocks, and supporting the livelihood and food security of so many millions,” the problem does not go away, said people familiar with the discussions. +
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