Ambassador Peter Thomson is a senior Fijian diplomat who was recently appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as his Special Envoy for the ocean, seeking to galvanize efforts to protect the world's seas, including through the implementation of SDG14, the Sustainable Development Goal to “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”.
Target 6 of SDG14 is particularly relevant to the WTO and MC 11: “By 2020, prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and refrain from introducing new such subsidies, recognizing that appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries should be an integral part of the World Trade Organization fisheries subsidies negotiation”.
During his term as President of the UN General Assembly from September 2016 to September 2017, Ambassador Thomson stood out as a strong ocean advocate at the first High-Level UN Ocean Conference held in New York in June and which agreed to “Act decisively to prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and refrain from introducing new such subsidies, including through accelerating work to complete negotiations at the World Trade Organization on this issue, recognising that appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries should be an integral part of those negotiations”. (Paragraph 13.p of the UN Ocean Conference Call for Action)
