Strengthening European Union fisheries by removing harmful subsidies

• Published in: Marine Policy
• Main Authors: Villasante Larramendi, Carlos Sebastián, Sumaila, Rashid, Rocha, José María da, Carvalho, Natacha, Skerritt, Daniel, Schuhbauer, Anna, Cisneros-Montemayor, Andrés M., Bennett, Nathan, Hanich, Quentin, Prellezo, Raúl
• Other Authors: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Departamento de Economía Aplicada, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Instituto Interdisciplinar de Tecnoloxías Ambientais (CRETUS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier
• Subjects: World Trade Organization; Fisheries; Subsidies; Europe; Canada; Oceana; Pew; Referencia; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10347/27905; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104884

Harmful fisheries subsidies have historically contributed to fleet overcapacity and continue to be allocated to the fishing industry to artificially maintain its profitability. However, in this contribution we show that removing harmful subsidies and reducing overfishing will help to recover the resource biomass, subsequently leading to increased levels of sustainable catches, income and well-being of fishers, and reduces inequities in income and consumption when fish stocks are not effectively managed. Maintaining harmful fisheries subsidies is socially and economically inefficient. Taking the example of the EU fishing fleet, one of the largest fishing fleets in the world, we use the total factor productivity to show that small-scale fishing fleet's productivity is almost two-fold in the North Atlantic and 16% higher in the Mediterranean and Black seas compared to large-scale vessels. This result is explained because the harmful fisheries subsidies disproportionately allocated to large-scale vessels introduce distortions in the efficient allocation of inputs. With critical WTO negotiations ongoing regarding the global rules on fisheries subsidies, the EU must take advantage of the opportunity to lead a desirable transformative change while also supporting developing nations to truly achieve global sustainable and equitable fisheries This research is supported by the EQUALSEA (Transformative adaptation towards ocean equity) project, under the European Horizon 2020 Program, ERC Consolidator Grant Agreement no 101002784 funded by the European Research Council, and Grupo de Referencia Competitiva GI-2060 AEMI, under Grant ED431C2019/11. S.V thanks the Consellería de Educación da Xunta de Galicia (Galicia, Spain) for additional funding support. U.R.S. and D.J.S. thank the Pew Charitable Trusts and Oceana for their support of work related to harmful fisheries subsidies, and the OceanCanada Partnership supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The opinions expressed in this paper ...