Conserving marine wildlife through world trade law

Abstract

Fishing is a global industry. While many populations, or stocks, of fish lie wholly within the jurisdiction of one nation, many other fish populations either straddle national boundaries or migrate freely from the jurisdictional waters of one nation to the international high seas to the jurisdictional waters of another nation. The trade in fish is similarly unrestricted by national boundaries. A fish market in the United States might sell swordfish and tuna caught on the Atlantic or Pacific high seas by an Asian or European vessel, Patagonian toothfish (sold as Chilean seabass) caught in the Antarctic high seas by vessels from Spain, grouper caught in Southeast Asia, or orange roughy, a deep-sea fish caught in New Zealand. In fact, over eighty percent of the seafood sold in the United States is imported.1 The top countries exporting to the United States include China, Thailand, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam.2 nationally, comprising up to thirteen percent of global agricultural trade.3 Governments, international organizations, Oceana,4 non-governmental organizations have long realized that this global food supply is in peril. Because both the resource, and the trade in the re- source, extends beyond national boundaries, sustaining the world’s fisheries will not be possible without effective international regulation. Unfortunately both national and international regulatory schemes are predicated on a model of fishery management that fails to address the practical realities of controlling human impacts on complex ecosystems and the perverse economic incentives that lead to overfishing. Further- more, international fisheries treaties are not strongly enforceable. Part I of this Essay marshals the evidence that fisheries around the world are in peril from destructive fishing practices. Part II argues that most fisheries management regimes are ineffective at counteracting the political pres- sures and economic incentives that lead to unsustainable fishing. Part III makes the case that government subsidies are major enablers of overfish- ing. The fourth and final Part discusses the continuing efforts to use international trade regulation to eliminate overfishing subsidies and halt the collapse of the world’s marine fish populations.