Fisheries and aquaculture provide employment for millions and food for billions. Governments provide support to fisheries to manage fish resources, maintain jobs, support incomes, guarantee food security and respond to unexpected disruptions. But subsidies and other forms of support that make it easier and cheaper to fish can unintentionally drive overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, particularly where fisheries management is ineffective. It is therefore essential to understand how, why and where fisheries support policies can pose risks to fisheries sustainability and socioeconomic outcomes and to mitigate those risk through better policy design and targeting. To this end, this policy brief sheds light on how public money is being spent using data from the OECD Fisheries Support Estimate (FSE) database and presents a framework to assess the risks of unsustainable fishing posed by different types of support policy. It also provides concrete recommendations for smarter public spending.
