Governments across the world have pledged to re-ignite stalled “Fish Two” negotiations and finalize the second part of a long-sought agreement to curb harmful fishing subsidies by mid-2028. The commitment came at the World Trade Organization’s recently concluded 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14) in Yaoundé, Cameroon, where little progress was made on the long-running issue. “It’s important that WTO members have agreed to continue negotiating. But the prospects of reaching a deal remain dim,” Kristen Hopewell, global policy specialist at the University of British Columbia, Canada, told Mongabay. “Just a handful of states are blocking an agreement supported by the vast majority of the WTO membership.” These comprise the U.S., India and Indonesia, according to a Marine Policy paper Hopewell authored earlier this year. WTO members became deadlocked trying to decide how to ban nations from subsidizing their fishing industries in ways that contribute to overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, as mandated by U.N. Sustainable Development Target 14.6. Negotiations began in 2001 and dragged out over 21 years. In 2022, WTO members decided to split the elusive agreement in two. This unlocked a deal dubbed “Fish One,” curtailing subsidies that enable IUU fishing and the continued fishing of overfished stocks. Fish One came into force on Sept. 15, 2025, but left the thorny question of how to ban all overfishing and capacity-enhancing subsidies, which enable fleets to operate unsustainably, for ongoing “Fish Two” negotiations. These have progressed little since 2022. Three more states ratified Fish One at MC14:…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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