September 29, 2025 — Countries across the world spend many billions of dollars every year subsidizing fishing that is environmentally damaging and unsustainable.
After years of tortuous negotiation under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a global deal to reign in these subsidies emerged. The first part of this Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies finally entered into force this month, while a second part remains at the debate stage, held up by disagreements.
With consensus still lacking on crucial details, can these rules actually end subsidies that are contributing to overfishing across the world, and harming food supplies to some of the world’s most vulnerable people?
Dialogue Earth asked five experts for their views.
‘Fish populations finally have a chance to recover’
Megan Jungwiwattanaporn works on reducing harmful fisheries subsidies at The Pew Charitable Trusts
In the mid-1970s, 10% of fish stocks were fished at unsustainable levels. By 2021, that number had almost quadrupled to 37.7%. Subsidy-driven overfishing is depleting fish populations and hurting coastal communities who depend on a healthy ocean for their livelihoods and survival.
With the agreement now legally binding for the two-thirds of WTO member countries who have ratified it, fish populations finally have a chance to begin to recover.
And, as the WTO’s first sustainability-focused agreement, it paves the way for future multilateral treaties that protect the environment, and for broader fisheries reform at regional and country levels.
The agreement is also a step toward meeting one of the targets of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which 193 countries adopted in 2015. As part of Goal 14, nations committed to reaching an agreement to end harmful fisheries subsidies.
But the work is not finished. Countries must implement the agreement by limiting some of the subsidies they give out that drive harmful practices. And WTO members must still finalize negotiations on additional rules that would end subsidies not included in the agreement: those that contribute to fishing in other countries’ waters and to overfishing and overcapacity, or a fleet’s ability to harvest more fish than is sustainable. Doing this will give fish populations an even better chance to recover.