Eliminating Harmful Subsidies Could Improve Health of U.S. Fisheries
March 3, 2009:
A new report published by FERU’s Dr. Rashid Sumaila and Renée Sharpe of the Environmental Working Group suggest that fisheries subsidies were in excess of $713 million annually between 1996 and 2004. Appearing in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management, the authors report that about 44% of subsidies provided through this time period were targeted at reducing the cost of fuel — a subsidy well known to lead to over-fishing.
The work of Sharp & Sumaila is in complement of previous reports by Khan et al. (2006) and Sumaila et al. (2008) who report global estimates of fisheries subsidies. Where these previous studies estimated harmful subsidies to be $332 million for the year 2000, this most recent report suggests that number is closer to $400 million. The Sharp & Sumaila report do not consider subsidies for fisheries management, which, was previously estimated to be $1.1 billion for the year 2000.