India shapes WTO Phase-II fisheries subsidy talks

At the WTO's 14th Ministerial Conference in Yaoundé, India pressed equity carve-outs for small fishers into the next round of fisheries-subsidy negotiations.

What happened

• Fisheries subsidies was a headline agenda item at the World Trade Organization's Fourteenth Ministerial Conference (MC14), held 26–29 March 2026 in Yaoundé, Cameroon — the first WTO ministerial hosted on the African continent.
• The Indian delegation, led by Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, helped shape the Ministerial Decision that fixes the future course of Phase II negotiations on subsidies that drive overcapacity and overfishing.
• India anchored its case on equity: Special & Differential Treatment (S&DT) for developing countries and LDCs, Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), and the Polluter Pays Principle, all framed against Sustainable Development Goal 14.6.
• India's four concrete asks: a 25-year transition period for developing countries; stronger disciplines on distant-water industrial fleets; a permanent carve-out for small-scale and artisanal fishers; and subsidy disciplines based on per-capita intensity rather than aggregate tonnage.
• India's core argument: overcapacity and overfishing arise from heavily subsidised industrial fleets, not from the small-scale fishers of India and other developing countries and LDCs — so any discipline must not disproportionately hit vulnerable coastal communities.
• India pointed to its own restraint: it supports more than 9 million fisher families (largely small, traditional and artisanal), is not a heavily industrialised fishing nation with distant-water fleets, and pays fisheries subsidies of only about USD 15 per fisher family a year — among the world's lowest.

Background & context

The dispute over who gets to keep subsidising their fishing boats is one of the WTO's oldest unfinished files. The World Trade Organization, born on 1 January 1995 out of the Marrakesh Agreement that concluded the Uruguay Round of GATT, runs world trade rules by consensus among its 160-plus members; its highest decision-making body is the Ministerial Conference (MC), which meets roughly every two years. A negotiating mandate to discipline harmful fisheries subsidies was first set at the Doha Ministerial (2001) and sharpened at Hong Kong (2005), but it sat unresolved for two decades — one of the longest-running mandates in the organisation's history.

The breakthrough came at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12, Geneva, June 2022), where members adopted the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies — the WTO's first agreement with environmental sustainability at its centre, and only the second multilateral agreement reached since the organisation was created. That MC12 text, often called "Phase I", bans three categories of the most damaging support: subsidies for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, subsidies for fishing of overfished stocks, and subsidies for fishing on the unregulated high seas. It is what is meant when this release speaks of the prior phase. The Agreement enters into force only once two-thirds of members deposit their instruments of acceptance.

What MC12 deliberately left out was the hardest part: disciplines on the broad mass of subsidies that drive overcapacity and overfishing (OCOF) — fuel subsidies, fleet-modernisation grants, capacity-building support — which is where the money and the development stakes are largest. That unfinished agenda is "Phase II", and it is what India was negotiating at MC14. The directly relevant target is SDG 14.6, which calls on the global community to prohibit subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing and to eliminate those that abet IUU fishing — the only Sustainable Development Goal whose delivery was explicitly handed to the WTO.

India's stake is structural, not rhetorical. Its fisheries sector is overwhelmingly small-boat, near-shore and labour-intensive — the opposite of the highly mechanised, distant-water fleets of several developed and large fishing economies whose state support keeps too many boats chasing too few fish. India's recurring negotiating position across MC12, the failed MC13 (Abu Dhabi, 2024) and now MC14 has been that a uniform cut would penalise countries that never overfished in the first place, while letting the historically heavy subsidisers off lightly — a fairness problem the equity principles are meant to correct.

For Prelims

• The event: WTO MC14 · 26–29 March 2026 · Yaoundé, Cameroon (first WTO ministerial in Africa). India led by Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.
• The body: World Trade Organization, established 1 January 1995 (Marrakesh Agreement, end of GATT's Uruguay Round); HQ Geneva; top organ is the Ministerial Conference, meeting about every two years; decisions by consensus.
• The agreement family: Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies adopted at MC12 (Geneva, 2022) = "Phase I", banning subsidies for IUU fishing, overfished stocks, and high-seas-unregulated fishing. Phase II = the still-open round on overcapacity & overfishing (OCOF), the subject at MC14.
• The SDG link: SDG 14.6 (Life Below Water) — prohibit OCOF subsidies and eliminate IUU-enabling subsidies; the one SDG target routed through the WTO.
• India's four asks: (1) 25-year transition for developing countries; (2) stronger curbs on distant-water industrial fleets; (3) permanent carve-out for small-scale/artisanal fishers; (4) per-capita-intensity disciplines.
• The principles invoked: S&DT (Special & Differential Treatment — built-in WTO flexibilities for developing countries/LDCs), CBDR-RC (a principle drawn from environmental/climate negotiations), and the Polluter Pays Principle.
• India's numbers: ~9 million fisher families supported; fisheries subsidies ~USD 15 per fisher family per year — among the lowest worldwide; annual fishing-ban period cited as a long-standing conservation measure.
• What it is NOT: MC14 did not conclude or sign a new fisheries agreement — it produced a Ministerial Decision setting the course for Phase II talks, not a finished treaty. Phase II is not Phase I: the MC12 Agreement (IUU / overfished stocks / high seas) is the completed first phase; OCOF is the open second phase. CBDR-RC and Polluter Pays are not native WTO doctrines — India is importing equity principles from the environmental/climate regime into a trade forum.

Why it matters

Fisheries are where trade policy, food security and ocean ecology meet. Globally, roughly a third of assessed marine stocks are fished beyond biologically sustainable levels, and a large share of the public money flowing into the sector — by many estimates the tens of billions of dollars in capacity-enhancing support — pushes fleets to fish harder than the ocean can bear. Disciplining that money is the lever SDG 14.6 reaches for, and the WTO is the only forum with binding, enforceable trade rules to pull it. For India, the outcome decides whether a country with ~9 million mostly small-boat fisher families can keep modest livelihood and fuel support, or whether a blunt global cut treats a low-subsidy, near-shore fishery the same as a heavily mechanised distant-water one.

The problem India is naming is one of historical responsibility. If subsidies are cut uniformly from today, the countries that built large industrial fleets on decades of state support lock in their advantage, while developing coastal economies that never overfished absorb a disproportionate share of the adjustment. India's per-capita-intensity proposal reframes the question from "how much does a country spend in total" to "how much support sits behind each fisher or each tonne of catch" — a metric that distinguishes a livelihood subsidy spread across millions of artisanal families from a concentrated grant powering a few hundred factory trawlers. The 25-year transition and the permanent small-fisher carve-out are the operational expressions of that fairness claim.

For Mains