To Improve Global Ocean Health, Countries Should Strengthen Fisheries Governance

Many of the world’s fisheries are at risk. Over the past 50 years, fishing has been the largest driver of marine biodiversity loss, as overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing have driven some stocks to the brink of collapse. And the people and coastal communities that depend on healthy fisheries for their livelihoods often bear the economic brunt of this ecological damage.

But this summer, the Our Ocean Conference – taking place in Mombasa, Kenya, 16-18 June – will offer a critical opportunity for the global community to discuss important changes to strengthen the health and sustainability of the world’s fisheries.

Among the most pressing matters attendees should consider are enhanced management – particularly to end harmful subsidies that drive overfishing – and bringing much-needed attention to the unmanaged and unregulated fisheries that continue to operate in areas of the ocean where weak oversight and missing rules allow industrial fishing to expand without adequate safeguards.

Strengthen efforts to end harmful fisheries subsidies

Last September, the landmark World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies entered into force, becoming the first legally binding global framework to curb the harmful subsidies that promote unsustainable fishing. Globally, governments provide an estimated $22 billion a year in subsidies, mainly to industrial fleets, to artificially lower fuel and gear costs. Before the treaty, nations could subsidize any vessel, including those operating in fisheries with little or no governance – such as the fleets that routinely catch huge amounts of unregulated squid without meaningful oversight or accountability. But now, under the agreement, governments have promised to end any payments that enable IUU fishing or fishing of overfished stocks or unmanaged high seas stocks.

Although the treaty represents a monumental step forward, several important components still should be added to it through new rules that WTO member governments are negotiating – ones that should be discussed by those attending the June conference. These include furthering WTO efforts on United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, which urges the WTO to end subsidies that are destructive to the marine ecosystem, beyond those that enable IUU fishing. Moving forward, countries should agree to stop financial incentives that help perpetuate overcapacity – when vessels are overequipped with boats, fuel or personnel – and the overfishing it contributes to.

At the same time, governments should consider global inequities, particularly where sustainability concerns are most acute. WTO members should end, without exception, subsides to the industrial-scale “distant water” (or high seas) fishing fleets that drive much of the ocean’s biodiversity decline. Further, to ensure successful implementation of the treaty, higher-income WTO member governments will need to provide technical assistance to the developing countries that, under the agreement, have the bulk of the enforcement burden. Only through these combined actions can the world truly put an end to harmful subsidies.

Bring unregulated squid fisheries up to international standards

The WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies targeted funding for fishing of certain unmanaged or unregulated fish stocks. And other international commitments – particularly the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to protect and conserve 30% of the ocean by 2030 – call for fishing to be done sustainably to prevent overexploitation and minimize harm to ecosystems. Yet little concrete action has been taken to improve the rules for the multibillion-dollar squid fishing industry, more than 85% of which takes place in unregulated areas of the high seas, creating a governance vacuum in one of the world’s most valuable fisheries.

Without management in place for squid and other unregulated species, governments cannot reliably assess the pressure on critical stocks, the scale of ecosystem impacts or whether sustainability commitments and biodiversity goals are being met. Although some localized management measures for squid are in place – for example, within a few coastal States’ territorial waters or at the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation or North Pacific Fisheries Commission – they don’t provide the level of regulation that apply to other fisheries.

Data on squid populations is limited, and regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) – the multinational bodies that oversee fishing throughout the global ocean – have thus far failed to put effective measures in place. Some significant squid fisheries in the northwest Indian Ocean, near the location of the 2026 Our Ocean conference, lack management and should ultimately be placed under the jurisdiction of an RFMO or other arrangement to ensure robust oversight.

Countries should make time at the conference to talk about advancing oversight and control of squid fishing vessels, including through the use of science-based harvest strategies – management approaches that use pre-agreed rules to eliminate annual catch limit negotiations – strong monitoring and other fisheries management tools that have already worked for dozens of species.

Although the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies can still be strengthened and unregulated fishing remains one of the clearest failures in global fisheries management, the fact that the global community is discussing these issues represents exciting momentum. Governments have prioritized fisheries' sustainability and understand that their health is critical to the ocean, to people and to the planet.

Elizabeth Wilson leads The Pew Charitable Trusts’ environmental policy team.