United Nations Environment Programme

Regional Symposium on “Sustainability Criteria for Fisheries Subsidies: The Latin American Context”

Guayaquil, Ecuador, 29-30 July 2009

UNEP and WWF, in collaboration with the Permanent Commission for the South Pacific (CPPS) and the Government of the Republic of Ecuador, hosted a symposium on

“Sustainability Criteria for Fisheries Subsidies: The Latin-American Context”

The two-day regional symposium brought together nearly 40 participants representing Latin American governments, regional fisheries organisations, non-governmental and governmental organisations, including the WTO and the World Bank.

The symposium took place in the context of the global fisheries crisis, the widely recognized need for fisheries subsidies reform, and the ongoing negotiations in the WTO towards new disciplines to eliminate subsidies that contribute to fleet overcapacity and overfishing. The symposium aimed at increasing the capacity of Latin American countries to participate in fisheries subsidies related policy-making processes.

Discussions largely focused on the incorporation of sustainability criteria into proposed new WTO rules on fisheries subsidies, as well as the implementation of sustainability criteria in national fisheries subsidies policies. The deliberations and analysis were based on the jointly published UNEP-WWF paper of 2007 entitled “Sustainability Criteria for Fisheries Subsidies: Options for the WTO and Beyond” with a view to increasing participants’ understanding of the recommendations set out in that paper. The symposium also focused on a pre-publication draft of a new UNEP-sponsored case study examining the impacts of subsidies on Ecuador ’s tuna industry.

The symposium included a combination of presentations by panels of experts and roundtable discussions. Among the topics discussed were:

the sustainable development challenges facing Latin American fisheries sectors, and the implications for how Latin American governments set priorities for the use of public funds;
the costs and benefits of sustainable fisheries management in developing countries, with an emphasis on affordable approaches to elements of fisheries management recommended by the UNEP-WWF sustainability criteria; and
an overview of the history and key issues in the WTOfisheries subsidies negotiations, including a technical analysis of the draft text of proposed new rules tabled by the Chair of the WTO Negotiating Group on Rules on 30 November 2007 .