A win despite unsuccessful lobby

IT wasn’t all losses for Pacific islands members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), whose position on the harmful impacts that fisheries subsidies were having on their fishery was said to have been largely ignored at the 13th WTO Ministers Conference that ended on Saturday in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Minister for Trade and lead negotiator for the Pacific, Manoa Kamikamica said the Pacific team managed to clinch a “watershed review clause” that gave the Pacific some control over their fishery.

“When we went in we were facing an uphill battle because the predetermined position was already there and no one was entertaining the Pacific’s position,” Mr Kamikamica said in an interview with The Fiji Times.

“So we had to pound down doors and we went as far as negotiating with the largest subsidisers in the world — China, the European Union and Japan, on the table, negotiating with the Pacific, to try and come up with a solution.

“In the end we didn’t quite get the capping but what we did achieve, which has never been done in the WTO before, is come up with a review clause.”

The clause, he said, gives WTO Pacific members a bit more control over their fishery in that they can, five years after the fisheries subsidy agreement comes into force, “impose strict impositions” upon the big subsidising nations if they can prove that these nations have used subsidies to their benefit.

“In terms of the WTO review clauses, it was one of the watershed review clauses,” Mr Kamikamica said.

The Pacific WTO member countries want big subsidising nations China, the EU and Japan to reduce subsidy support of their fishing industries as it is indirectly leading to overfishing and overcapacity.

He said global subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity is worth around $US22billion ($F49.54B).