Don’t Blame India For Blocking the WTO
What’s really holding up a long-awaited global agreement to curb fishing subsidies is a widespread lack of trust — and the U.S. needs to make the first move to restore it.
India wants to be able to support its small fishermen.
Photographer: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is due to visit New Delhi this week and, to be honest, nobody in India knows why she’s coming. Trade experts elsewhere are aware that the World Trade Organization’s new director-general has staked her credibility — and the organization’s — on completing a long-delayed agreement to curb subsidies that have encouraged massive overfishing. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, India is holding up that agreement. In New Delhi, though, most think Okonjo-Iweala is coming to discuss India’s demand for an intellectual-property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines.
The fisheries talks have been trundling along since 2001, while deep-sea overfishing has become a bigger problem every year; perhaps one-third of fish reserves globally are now unsustainable. Shortly after assuming office, Okonjo-Iweala decided to make the issue a priority, hoping to cobble together an agreement at the ministerial-level WTO meeting set to take place in a fortnight. It’s easy to see why: The WTO desperately needs a win, this is the only active multilateral negotiation it is currently hosting and surely no one could have a problem with saving the world’s fisheries, right?