fisheries policy brief
Supporting sustainable fisheries
January 2023
ver USD 10 billion in public money goes to support fisheries every year. Investment in O assessing and ensuring fish stock health is beneficial to the industry and contributes to a sustainable ocean economy. But some support also drives unsustainable fishing practices. here is scope to improve fisheries support policy mixes to better support fishers in need, increase T fishing productivity, and minimise the risk of harming fish stocks and ecosystems at the same time. Governments need to move away from support that directly enhances fishing capacity and unsustainable fishing – notably support for fuel, vessels, and access to infrastructure.
What’s the issue? The fisheries sector makes a key contribution to global food security and the ocean economy. Government support can enhance this contribution when it helps ensure the health of fish stocks and ecosystems, increases fish stock productivity, and builds resilience in the fisheries sector. But poorly targeted government support can also have undesirable outcomes when it encourages the build-up of excess fishing capacity, and overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The risk that support ends up encouraging unsustainable fishing fundamentally depends on two things: • The type of support policy and how directly it affects fishing costs and benefits, which determines how directly it may encourage over-capacity, over-fishing and IUU fishing in the absence of effective fisheries management. • The condition of the fisheries benefiting from support – in particular, whether they are effectively managed, and whether there is scope for fishing the target stocks more intensely without compromising the stock’s health. The OECD has developed a tool to help governments assess the risk that their support policies may present for fish stock health. It classifies fisheries support types based on the level of risk they may pose to fishery sustainability, and lists mitigating factors that can limit this risk (effective management, targeting stocks that are underfished and policy design restricted to effectively managed or underfished fisheries).
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A historical step forward that can take global fisheries a long way In June 2022, after 20 years of negotiations, Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted an Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, which prohibits some of the most harmful fisheries subsidies, i.e. those that benefit IUU fishing, overfishing and fishing in the unregulated high seas. Governments now face the challenge of implementing this agreement and will continue negotiating to also eliminate subsidies that encourage overcapacity and overfishing, as pledged in Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life below water.
Support to fisheries at a glance The OECD Review of Fisheries 2022 presents data on support to fisheries for 40 OECD countries and other large fishing nations covered by the OECD Fisheries Support Estimate (FSE) data set, which together accounted for 90% of world landings over 2018-20. Together, they provided average annual support of USD 10.4 billion to the fisheries sector over that period. But how much of this support contributes to sustainable outcomes, and how much risks causing damage to fish stocks and livelihoods? Fisheries policy mixes vary considerably across countries, and, on average, the policy mix is quite different in OECD countries and in emerging economies (Figure 2). Overall, 42% of the support provided in OECD countries over 2018-
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