boat. the government has not disbursed buyback funds. The National Fisheries Association of Thailand says its members will stop fishing unless the government pays for the 1,300 decommissioned trawlers. On 3 August 2018, the Fisheries Department announced that it would buy-back 680 unlicensed fishing boats for three billion baht. Climate change poses a serious threat to the sustainability of the fisheries industry in the ASEAN region including Thailand. Illegal fishing On 21 April 2015 the European Commission threatened Thailand, the third-largest seafood exporter in the world, with a trade ban if it did not take action on illegal fishing. The EU, the world's largest importer of fish products, since 2010 has taken action against countries that do not follow international overfishing regulations, such as policing their waters for unlicensed fishing vessels and imposing penalties to deter illegal fishing. Thailand has failed to certify the origin and legality of its fish exports to the EU and now has six months, until October 2015, to implement a satisfactory action plan to address the shortcomings. EU fisheries commissioner Karmenu Vella declared that, "Analyzing what is actually happening in Thailand, we noticed that there are no controls whatsoever, there are no efforts whatsoever." The EU imported 145,907 tons of fish products worth €642 million from Thailand in 2014. In the view of the Bangkok Post, "The [Thai] fisheries bureaucracy's record is extremely shabby, resulting in a breakdown in state regulation of commercial trawlers. Fisheries officials are also known to have cozy relationships with trawler operators." In a press release dated 21 April 2016, the European Commission updated its assessment of Thailand's progress, saying, "The dialogue is proving difficult and there remain serious concerns about the steps taken by Thailand to fight IUU [illegal, unreported and unregulated] fishing activities. This means that further action by the Commission cannot be ruled out. A meeting with the Thai authorities in May [2016] will be a new opportunity for them to show their good will and commitment." In addition to Thailand's illegal fishing concerns, what is often overlooked are abusive labor practices. The labor abuses, often referred to as sea slavery, involve the trafficking of workers onto fishing boats quite frequently in the form of force, fraud, or coercion, including debt bondage. The problem of sea slavery is connected to environmental concerns in this and other fleets because overfishing of near-shore stocks have caused a collapse in the