Casting the net wider? The transformative potential of integrating human rights into the implementation of the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies

Abstract

The removal of harmful fisheries subsidies is essential to reverse unsustainable fisheries globally. This goal has now, in part, been met following the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in June 2022, which adopted an Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies. There is a vast literature on the trade law issues associated with fisheries subsidies, and much has been written on their detrimental environmental impacts. In this article, we take a different approach. We contextualize the elimination of harmful fisheries subsidies as part of the transformative change needed to reverse biodiversity loss, with the integration of human rights an essential precondition to such transformational processes. We develop a mutually supportive interpretation of international environmental law, international trade law and international human rights law, drawing on insights from regime interaction scholarship, to argue for reliance on human rights in the implementation of the historic agreement on the elimination of certain forms of harmful fisheries subsidies.

The ocean, sustainable development and human rights

“…This is the focus of the article by Switzer, Morgera and Webster, which explores the relevance of the new WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies from the perspective of human rights, underscoring existing international obligations for WTO members to ensure that the removal of subsidies, as well as the redistribution of funds arising from that removal, does not lead to violations of the human rights of small-scale fishers but, instead, contributes to the better protection and full realization of those rights. 19 Another prominent issue (and, according to many, an area of progress) at the UN Ocean Conference was the political momentum gained around a moratorium on deep-seabed mining, which was the priority for youth representatives. 20 The political declaration does not refer to deep-seabed mining specifically.…”