The recently appointed Director-General of the WTO, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala – the first female and first African in the role – noted that “there is an increasing loss of confidence in the ability of the WTO to produce results,” and that there is a need for the WTO to change their approach “from debate and rounds of questions to delivering results” in order to achieve success. On July , , Dr Okonjo-Iweala secured members commitment to a draft text as a basis for negotiations, raising hopes that a final deal can be struck this year.

Through these discussions, it quickly became clear that estimates of fish production in the country were based on little more than the number of registered fishing vessels. It meant that one of the early successes of PeskAAS was in providing a more accurate estimate of the national catch. This, in turn, provided decision makers with a clearer idea of what needed to be done to meet targets for national fish consumption, and how the gap could be plugged by the country’s nascent aquaculture sector.

The Common Fisheries Resource Analysis is a modest effort considering the scale of the South China Sea’s environmental challenges. Still, this relatively small step is important: the efforts are delivering scientific evidence to improve domestic policies. By combining the analysis among the five participating countries, fisheries policies have a stronger evidence base on which to make policy decisions.

To overcome this issue, we approached the communities one-by-one and held discussions with them in partnership with the Department of Fisheries – as a result, we were able to gain a better understanding of the fishers’ needs, and show how such a tool could help them. Involving fishers in the design of PeskAAS highlighted the need and mechanism for frequent feedback via municipal fisheries officers, which also helped establish local acceptance.

Some believe that developing countries and LDCs should be exempt from any new restrictions on harmful fisheries subsidies, as they are considered necessary for alleviating poverty and enabling developing countries to compete with large fishing countries. In reality, however, harmful subsidies are not effective for competing with large fishing nations and can worsen poverty in the medium to long term