Introduction

After almost five years of discussion at the Committee on Trade and Environment, WTO members embarked upon negotiations on fisheries subsidies as a result of the decision reached by ministers at the 4th Ministerial Conference of the WTO at Doha. The ministerial decision was couched in language that explicitly recognised the importance of the sector to developing countries and clearly implied the development of appropriate special and differential treatment rules. Yet despite the language, the principal submission by the ‘Friends of Fish’, the majority of which are developing countries, there has been no substantive call for special and differential treatment from developing countries.

This chapter begins by briefly considering both the economic case for fisheries subsidies disciplines and the evidence of the magnitude of those subsidies. The analysis proceeds to consider the existing subsidies rules in the WTO and perceived weaknesses that may exist in those rules, and then reviews the negotiating positions of various WTO members in the Negotiating Group on Rules which is considering the fisheries subsidies issue. The chapter attempts to explain the need for special and differential treatment of developing coastal states in the current round of WTO negotiations in terms of the particular development needs of coastal states.

Particular reference is made to the situation in the Pacific island states, which are the source of 45 per cent of the world's tuna landings and for which, as some of the world's smallest and most vulnerable island states, the fisheries subsidies issue is of vital economic importance.