Beyond Adoption: Closing the Gaps in the WTO Fisheries Subsidies Agreement (Executive Summary)

Abstract

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Center for Governance and Markets (CGM) at the University of Pittsburgh joined forces in 2023 to tackle the problem of global overfishing. Motivated by the World Trade Organization’s recent Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies and inspired by the research of Nobel Prize–winner Elinor Ostrom on governing the commons, Mercatus and CGM convened experts from various fields in an interdisciplinary, solutions-oriented workshop to take up these concerns. The workshop’s exchange of ideas resulted in the creation of over a dozen issue briefs aiming to inform the debate and implementation of the WTO agreement, balancing top-down governance with bottom-up management practices. This executive summary highlights key points from those briefs.

Keywords: commercial fishing, fisheries management, World Trade Organization, subsidies, overfishing, environmental sustainability, common-pool resources, Elinor Ostrom, conservation, renewable resources, government policy

JEL Classification: D02, F18, O13, Q00, Q22, Q27, Q28, Q50, Q58, J15, P48