Small scale fishing should be exempted from WTO talks
- The National Fishworkers Forum (NFF’s) asking it to protect the interest of small fishermen at WTO.
Key Highlights
- Farmers send a request to the commerce ministry to push the World Trade Organization (WTO) to keep small-scale fishing out of fisheries subsidies negotiations later this month.
- Commerce Ministry officials maintain that India will push against any form of curbs on its subsidies to poor fishermen at the WTO
- Also seek a moratorium on fishing subsidies from advanced countries including the US and EU during the upcoming inter-ministerial.
- India is the only country where small-scale fishers fish in large numbers
Fishermen are not responsible for decline in fish
- It is because of other factors like industrial pollution, global warming and coastal degradation which has affected the fishers
- NFF further told the government that there is a need for a robust domestic fisheries policy
- Aligns with international negotiations and without a cohesive national policy to define small-scale, artisanal and indigenous fish worker rights
- Their unique characteristics and fishing methods, India’s position at the WTO may lack the necessary foundation for effective representation.
- The Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS) was signed in 2022 at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the WTO
- But covered only illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and overfished stocks – consisting two out of the three pillars under consideration.
- Under the AFS, only a two-year special and differential treatment (S&D) exemption was made available for developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs).
Prelims takeaway
- WTO
- National Fishworkers Forum