How can fisheries subsidies reform benefit both fish and people?
Channel: IIED
Date: 2018-11-27

Eugenia Merayo, researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), discusses why more focus needs to be put on how fisheries subsidies impact on people.

"Subsidies are widely used by governments around the world, and the way they are considered – whether they are thought to be good or bad subsidies – depends on how they are perceived to impact on the environment and fish stocks," she says.

"You’ve probably heard before that a good subsidy for the environment might not be a good subsidy for people. But there’s actually more than that. It’s about how subsidies are designed and who really benefits from them – in order to achieve environmental, economic and social sustainability, subsidies need to be designed with people at the very centre."

IIED is looking at the impacts of subsidies on women, youth, indigenous groups or other vulnerable social groups that are not taken into account currently. And how equity considerations should be included when defining whether a subsidy is good or bad, and how reform could be done in a way that brings benefits to both fish and people.

More details: https://www.iied.org/fisheries