Global fishing subsidies do much more harm than good.

For centuries, fishing has provided one of the staples of the human diet.  In coastal regions around the globe it is deeply ingrained in our cultural identities.  Fish remains a vital contributor to food security for billions of people, and is one of the world’s most highly traded food products.  One in three fish caught today will cross an international border before it is consumed.  

The problem is that we’ve been pulling fish out of the oceans at a rate which is not even close to being sustainable.  Overfishing has already seriously depleted marine ecosystems.  Not only that, it threatens to disrupt crucial elements of the food chain that all animals – including humans – rely on.  The evidence of impending collapse is all around us.

Consider the North Sea where, in the mid-1800s, a typical fishing boat would be able to catch as much halibut in a single day as our entire fleet now hauls in for the year.  And that species is not an isolated case.  A recent report suggested there may be “fewer than 100 cod over the age of 13 years in the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Scandinavia”.  While this figure is still disputed by many, take a moment to consider what it means.  Even if the real number were 1,000, or even 10,000, that’s an alarmingly small number of cod living long enough to produce offspring.  What does that imply for the future health of the fishing industry?  

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization assesses that, of the 600 fish stocks evaluated, “33% are now either overfished or depleted, and most of the rest are at their limit.”  Industry watchdogs estimate that approximately 85% of global fish stocks are “over-exploited, depleted, fully exploited or in recovery from exploitation”.  Trends are not in our favor – with the overall numbers of virtually every commercially-fished species down anywhere from 50-to-90% over just the last half-century.

How did we get here?  

Essentially, it’s the tragedy of the commons whereby everyone is incented to catch as much as they can until such time as every rival shows restraint.  This is what can happen with any resource owned by everyone and no-one at the same time.  So a lack of effective, enforceable international agreements is a big part of it.  But it’s also obvious that many government subsidies cause overfishing to be much worse than it otherwise would be.  The problem is not only the type of subsidies often employed, but also who typically receives them.

Subsidies can be defined as any financial transfer from public entities to the private sector which enable those enterprises to be more profitable than they otherwise would be.  In the case of the fishing industry, when profits are artificially increased, either by reducing the cost of fishing or by increasing fishers’ revenues, they risk incentivizing overcapacity, which inevitably leads to overfishing.  

Today, global fishing subsidies amount to somewhere around USD $35 billion.  Despite often being a well-intentioned means to ensure food security, there is no doubt whatever that they are the cause of growing insecurity in many regions.  This is especially true of many developing nations.  In 2015 the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations concluded that certain forms of subsidies do more harm than good and should be ended.   

Further, a 2018 report showed that only 19% of subsidies went to what is described as the small-scale fishing sub-sector.  This includes subsistence fisheries and what are called artisanal fisheries.  (The latter refers to persons or companies that produce something in limited quantities, often using traditional methods.)  So that’s about a fifth going to small-scale, low-tech, low-capital fishing practices – many of them coastal ethnic groups who make short trips close to shore. 

By contrast, the other four-fifths went to what is called the large-scale (or industrial) fishing sub-sector.  These are the fleets from China, the E.U. and elsewhere who’ve depleted the formerly rich waters off West Africa, forcing local fishers to venture far out to sea to get a decent catch.  The fleets who’ve turned large areas of seabed in the Mediterranean, North Sea and Pacific into what are essentially deserts through such destructive practices as bottom trawling.  Sadly, even if you object to these practices and have chosen not to eat fish, you’re still paying taxes to help keep these fisheries afloat.

There may be a better way.

The objective is to avoid doing harm to the long-term health of either fishing sector.  Food security can be attained only by encouraging practices that preserve the biological integrity of our fisheries.  Some kinds of subsidies do a much better job of this than others.  Experts believe that the most harmful are those aimed at reducing operating costs, such as support for fuel, fishing gear and ships.  These drive more fishing activity and encourage overfishing, ultimately depleting stocks, and therefore yields.  Worse, these kinds of government assistance tend to favor the less-vulnerable larger operations.  (It’s worth noting that artisanal fishing  provides 90% of the sector’s jobs.)

Research over the last 20 years shows that there are types of subsidies that can protect fishers but without encouraging depletion of the resource base.  The key is to reduce fishing activities so that stocks can recover and get back to sustainable levels.  Rather than reduce costs, it would be better to supplement incomes to compensate for the fish that won’t be caught.  It would also be helpful if agreements can be put in place between governments, based on our improved understanding of how subsidies affect fisheries.  We sincerely hope that current multilateral talks at the World Trade Organization will one day bear fruit.  Right now, an estimated 80% of subsidies support fisheries which are unsustainable.  That has to change, and soon.

If we’re to reverse our current ‘race to the bottom’ and avert a complete collapse of our fisheries, our governments will need to completely revise how they approach support for the industry.  Financial help should directly target fishers’ incomes, much like employment or disaster insurance might do.  Either way, we must remove the incentive to over-fish.  Regulators also need to face reality and set quotas that reflect the actual stock levels in their surrounding waters.   From there a system of  individual tradable catch shares might be implemented, with everyone having a stake in the fishery’s long term health. This will be much easier to do if international agreements encourage everyone to co-operate with the strategic view of letting our ocean ecosystems recover.

There is no viable alternative.  If we don’t come together to dismantle harmful subsidies, the already precarious state of the world’s fish stocks will become terminal.  The current policies subsidising vast fleets to compete with those of other nations in chasing ever-diminishing numbers of fish is entirely unsustainable.   The only possible result will be oceans virtually emptied of fish – something fisheries experts predict will happen by 2048, should current trends continue.

The state of our global fish stocks has already gotten so bad that in most severely depleted zones we’re going to need to establish marine protected areas where, for the foreseeable future, all fishing activities will be banned.  In zones where we do continue to fish, quotas will have to be realistic, and we’ll need to come to agreement about how they’ll be properly monitored and enforced.  We simply cannot continue to remove five million fish from the ocean every minute, around the clock. 

How we apply subsidies – the size and type we choose to employ – will go a very long way towards deciding whether we continue what is effectively a war on the oceans.  We can’t live on a planet with dead seas, which is where our current system is heading us.  But we can take a different path.  With everyone incented to preserve the fish stocks that will provide us with a big part of our food security.  With consumers who demand accountability from what has been up-until-now a highly destructive industry.  With meaningful seafood labeling laws that can deliver confidence that the food we eat from the ocean comes from a sustainable source. 

We can do much better.

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Anna, Canadian Cetacean Alliance