Catch-All Controls Aren’t likely To End Overfishing

Context: Coordinated action by countries is essential to tackle common environmental threats like overfishing which has become a mortal threat to much marine life.

Issues in regulating overfishing

• Emerging economies to bear burden disproportionately larger than their contribution to the problem.
  • Mostly industrial-scale fishing by rich nations is responsible for depletion of fisheries resources.
• Issues in policy framing: As depletion of fish stock varies from one part of the globe to another.
  • Absence of consensus on modifying policies to curb the danger: delay in World Trade Organization’s (WTO) effort to forge a multilateral pact.
• Subsidies to encourage fishing are estimated to range from $14 billion to $54 billion per year.
  • Cheap fuel for vessels that trawl the deep seas beyond 200 nautical miles from a shore.
• Illegal, unreported and unregulated deep-sea fishing approximately between 20% and 50% of all deep-sea fishing.
  • High-volume mechanized operations that are responsible for most of the marine damage cannot be traced to the policies of countries like India.

Way forward: A flexible approach based on principle that those who have done most harm must work hardest to salvage it.

• India –Ideal response: India ‘s proposal for WTO
  • 25-year moratorium on deep-sea-fishing subsidies by all except the least developed countries and those with an under-1% share of the global fish haul.
  • As for territorial waters—within 12 nautical miles so long as a country can sustain its own marine life, no restriction should be placed on subsidies.
  • India could soften its position on deep-sea waivers, but on coastal-zone fishing.
• Separating subsidies that aid fishing in one zone from another through WTO framework for sake of a better-balanced and more reachable agreement.
• Appreciation of local complexities when it comes to meeting global goals in High table talks.
  • Fisher folk of modest means must not find themselves at the raw end of an international bargain aimed at reducing ecological risks as they played no part in raising.