By IANS
Chennai : New rules on fisheries subsidies being negotiated at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) may put a stop to fishing in the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and seriously jeopardise the future of thousands of Indian fishermen, senior bureaucrats and experts said here Friday.
India must ensure that the proposed WTO rules on fisheries subsidies do not affect the livelihood of its small fishermen and coastal communities along its 7,600 km coast, they said.
They were speaking at a stakeholder consultation workshop on fisheries subsidies negotiations, organised by the departments of commerce and animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries, and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), among others. Lawyers and academics attended, too.
Inaugurating the workshop, Jayanta Dasgupta, joint secretary, department of commerce, said the “conditions attached to invoking the special and differential treatment exemptions” were “too stringent, impracticable” and “would impede the national development and management plans” for India’s marine fishing.
The official pointed out that the fisheries management regimes sought to be prescribed for implementation by the WTO “are too onerous for India”.
Ajay Bhattacharya, joint secretary in the department of animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries, pointed out that India’s EEZ was under-exploited.
Therefore, “WTO rules should not shut the door on future financial assistance, especially for infrastructure development and for poorer fishermen, which the government might provide,” he said.
Officials from governments of Andhra Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal pointed out that most of the fishermen in India were resource-poor and survived on subsistence-level fishing.
“The new WTO rules, which were being negotiated, should not be applicable to small fishermen,” they said.
Most of the stakeholders viewed the WTO-proposed “fisheries management system and peer review of scientific assessment of fisheries stock” as being onerous, complex and difficult to implement in India.
The central government was urged to “ensure that effective legal provisions are negotiated” to protect India’s fishing communities.
Following the Doha Ministerial Declaration of 2001, negotiations on fisheries subsidies are being undertaken at the WTO.
The negotiations are aimed at clarifying and improving the WTO disciplines on fisheries subsidies, as well as the impact of fisheries subsidies on sustainable development, in both developed and developing countries.
Countries like New Zealand and Chile have called for “tighter disciplines” and say that certain “subsidies increase the capacity for fishing and have adverse effects on resource sustainability”.
In already over-exploited seas, subsidies and capital support further deplete resources and result in unsustainable levels of fishing, these countries argue.
These countries have proposed “a broad prohibition on fisheries subsidies”, with limited exceptions for developing countries.
The exceptions are to be made only if countries comply with “strict requirements of fisheries management systems”.
This plan is being opposed by India and many other developing countries, as environmental concerns have to be fully addressed through multilateral environment agreements.
Only trade-distorting aspects should be addressed through a WTO discipline, India has said.
Dasgupta and Bhattacharya said they apprehended that “some of the proposed conditions (if finally accepted) could lead to the takeover of the fishery management function from the member country (India in this case) of the WTO”.
If countries like India agreed to the proposed WTO fishing rules, the member government could be stopped from implementing schemes aimed at supporting fishermen in a sustainable manner, as any new subsidy scheme would be allowed “only if prior stock assessment has been undertaken”, which would have to be reviewed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN.
In the future, they said, this could eventually lead to “a third party such as the FAO” managing India’s sea fishing activity.
Drawing attention to the rudimentary and underdeveloped infrastructure available at fishing harbours and landing sites in India, Dasgupta emphasised the “need for India to retain the flexibility to develop marine infrastructure, without being tied to onerous obligations”.
Officials also noted with concern that “the negotiating text being discussed at the WTO might permit developed countries to subsidies their fishermen through transfer of fishing access rights in waters of developing countries”.
Unctad deputy project coordinator Abhijit Das said in response that the stakeholders’ concerns on the proposed fisheries management regimes “would carry more conviction in negotiations” if India was able to “pinpoint specific legal clauses” that might be difficult to implement.