BUENOS AIRES: An informal group of nations calling themselves the ‘Friends of the Fish’ are attempting to sink fishing industry subsidies, charging that they distort the international market — as do farm subsidies — and contribute to the degradation of the world’s marine resources.

The pro-fish group, which comprises countries with major fishing resources, was able to put the sector’s subsidies on the agenda of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as of the 2001 ministerial conference in Doha, and have made advances in achieving agreements aimed at eliminating or sharply reducing such assistance.

The Friends of the Fish, a group founded by Australia, Chile, Iceland, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines and the United States, have fought alongside environmentalists for four years to get the subsidies issue on the table, targeting the European Union, Asian countries and others.

But the focus of the WTO debate continues to be farm subsidies.

At the WTO ministerial meet in the Qatari capital in November 2001, Argentina, Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Thailand joined the Friends.

The group thus had greater presence at the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference, Sept 10-14 in the Mexican resort of Cancun, where they presented a proposal for reducing or definitively eliminating fishing industry subsidies.

But the inability of the WTO member states to produce any agreements on agricultural trade led to the failure of the Cancun meet, and the ‘Doha Development Round’ negotiations have ground to a halt.

Now work is only being carried out in informal settings on some of the central trade topics, but none include fishing, an Argentine diplomatic source told IPS.

Worldwide, fishing subsidies total an estimated 15 to 20 billion dollars annually, relatively little compared to the 350 billion the industrialized world gives its farmers. But in the fishing context there is the added factor of the dramatic deterioration of ocean resources.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF, also known as World Wildlife Fund) calculates that governmental assistance to the fishing industry is equal to 20 per cent of the value of annual catches worldwide. WWF warns that 75 per cent of ocean fisheries are over-exploited, or are recovering from a period of extreme depletion of species.

Beginning with the Doha Round, the Friends of the Fish found that there was willingness in the European Union to negotiate, as the bloc was already engaged in reforming its common fisheries policy.

But Japan and South Korea are a different story, as they do not admit there is a relation between subsidies and over-fishing.

Furthermore, the countries that subsidise production for domestic consumption argue that the debate on the matter should be taking place under the auspices of the United Nations FAO, not in the WTO.

In Latin America, the countries most concerned about the effects of subsidies on their fisheries are Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Peru, says Ernesto Godelman, of the Argentine non-governmental organization CeDePesca, which participated in the informal talks on the issue in Cancun.

But for now, the negotiations remain frozen, and it remains to be seen if the WTO General Council will be able to kick-start the talks when it meets in Geneva in December.

And the Friends of the Fish will gather once again in the shadow of the great debate on agricultural subsidies.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.