Fisheries today are in crisis: two-thirds of the world's marine fish stocks are fished to their limit or beyond sustainable levels. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide depend on fisheries for their livelihood or income. Trade in fish, fish products, and fisheries services is a major source of income for many developing countries. 40 percent of fish and fish products enter international trade which suggests that trade can play a role in the fisheries crisis. Whilst empirical knowledge about how trade does or can play a role in the fisheries crisis is scant, the fisheries and trade debate is alive in a number of national and international fora including the World Trade Organization and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Fish for Thought seeks to highlight some of the key considerations at the intersection of trade, fisheries, and sustainable development. It highlights key issues, sets out questions for initial consideration, and draws attention to areas needing further research and elaboration.

Fish for Thought is provided as the first product of an ICTSD and IUCN programme on fisheries, international trade, and sustainable development programme which aims to inject both the conservation and the sustainable development perspectives into the debate on trade and fisheries, and ultimately seeks to facilitate policy outcomes that ensure that international trade in fisheries is supportive of sustainable development.

The programme's main activity will be to link processes and actors by convening and supporting a process of policy dialogues, research, publications, and information exchange on fisheries, international trade, and sustainable development. This process will bring together all the relevant actors, including policy-makers working on international trade-related issues, on development policy, and on international environmental questions, as well as industry representatives, fisheries managers, representatives of the environmental community, and fishworkers organisations.