The global fate of fisheries, their decline and overexploitation, may yet show a more promising environmental future. Where trade agreements failed to halt the overfishing of oceans, the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place next month in Copenhagen may yet be the solution.

The trick lies in the pledge by the leaders of the G20 group of countries to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies in the “medium term.” Fuel subsidies are undeniably part of the Copenhagen political agenda. The environmental problems resulting from the subsidizing of overfishing will most likely be solved with the climate deal stipulation that the world’s fishing fleets convert to biofuels.

It is a well-documented fact that ‘fisheries account for 1.2% of global oil consumption and emit more than 130m tons of carbon dioxide a year. That makes the industry similar in scale to the Netherlands, the 18th-most prolific oil-consuming country.’ Many critics have noted that ‘in subsidising unsustainable practices, governments are promoting a licensed form of theft by one generation from the next.’ In the last ten years, ‘fishing subsidies have cost $250 billion.’

According to Victor do Prado, deputy chief of staff at the WTO, “Fisheries is part of the overall Doha mandate. As long as this issue is treated within the WTO it is difficult to decouple it from the rest of the round dossiers. What would countries like Japan and Korea be gaining by decoupling? In other words, a global deal on fisheries subsidies is unlikely because countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Spain—all of which have large fishing fleets—do not want to cut subsidies.”

Fact is overfishing is subsidized by billions of taxpayer dollars, euros and yen. If the WTO cannot solve the conundrum, climate-change negotiations might just be able to.

Via The Economist