A Success Story in Sea Life Recovery

The World Trade Organition (WTO) released a video on a success story in sea life recovery in Costa Rica to mark World Oceans Day on June 8. 

A fishing community in Tárcoles, on the country’s Pacific coast, decided to protect its livelihood by setting up a marine conservation area. 

“It is everybody’s job to ensure the well-being of marine life,” says the WTO, which has a role to play in negotiation a limit to harmful fisheries subsidies, affirmed in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.6, part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015.

SDG 14.6 targets to “by 2020, prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and over-fishing, and eliminate subsidies that contribute to IUU fishing, and refrain from introducing new such subsidies, recognizing that appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries should be an integral part of the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiation.”

Speaking at an informal ministerial meeting on May 23 organized by the Australian government on the margins of the OECD meetings in Paris, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo urged ministers to address systemic challenges and advance negotiating work in parallel. He warned that current progress on fisheries subsidies would need to intensify if there was to be a successful outcome by the agreed end-of-year deadline.