This edition of OECD Review of Fisheries is the first to be published since the landmark agreement reached by members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in June 2022. After more than 20 years of negotiations, they agreed to prohibit subsidies for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, fishing of overfished stocks, and fishing in the unregulated high seas. They also agreed to take special care and exercise due restraint when subsidising fishing of stocks which are not monitored.

Globally, fisheries are an important source of nutritious food and play a key role in global food security. They also provide livelihoods and play an important role in the local economy of coastal communities in many countries. As such, governments regulate and support fisheries to ensure they are both productive and sustainable, maintain fishers’ incomes in the face of shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the large-scale aggression by Russia against Ukraine, and ensure the well-being of people living in areas where alternative income sources are scarce.

Fisheries play a key role in global food security and in the local economy of coastal communities in many countries. Sustainably managing fish stocks and supporting fisheries in ways that do not compromise the health of resources is fundamental to the social, economic, and environmental performance of the fisheries sector and its resilience to shocks, including those caused by climate change. This edition of the OECD Review of Fisheries brings together available data on fish stock health, fisheries management, and support to fisheries in OECD countries and the main fishing nations outside the OECD to assess the health of fisheries and investigate how public policies could better support fisheries’ contribution to global food security and the ocean economy. This chapter discusses the main findings.

The health and productivity of fish stocks are key determinants of fisheries performance. Sustainably managing fish stocks is necessary to achieve the socio-economic objectives governments and stakeholders have for fisheries. This chapter analyses the health and productivity of assessed fish stocks in 32 countries and economies and discusses how commercially important fisheries are managed. It provides a reliable approximation of the status of fish stocks at the global level and detailed information at the country level, to better target management action. The chapter closes with a special focus on how to address ghost fishing gear, that is gear lost, abandoned, or otherwise discarded at sea, which can have a significant detrimental impact on fish stock health and the ocean more generally.

This chapter provides an overview of how 40 countries and economies support their fisheries and how this support has evolved in recent years making use of the OECD Fisheries Support Estimate, a unique database which measures, describes, and classifies fisheries support policies consistently and transparently. It then discusses the impact of government support to fisheries, focusing on how it can affect the health of fish stocks. It proposes a risk-based framework that can help governments assess the risks of encouraging unsustainable fishing that their support policy mix may present. The chapter then discusses how governments can avoid supporting illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. It closes with an exploratory discussion of non-specific support policies that benefit the fisheries sector, alongside a range of other economic sectors.