Certification & Sustainable Fisheries

Brian Perkins, Regional Director, Americas

Marine Stewardship Council
March 21, 2019

@MSCBlueFish 1
Certifications
and Ratings:
What’s the
difference?

2
 CERTIFICATION & RATINGS COLLABORATION

Five global seafood certification

and ratings programs working
together to coordinate our tools
and increase our impact so that
more seafood producers move
along a clear path toward
environmental sustainability
and social responsibility
 COLLABORATION PURPOSE

• Coordinate complementary
tools
• Communicate more clearly with
seafood producers and buyers
• Analyze and track the global
landscape of sustainable
seafood
• Collaborate to fill gaps and
scale impact
 COMPLEMENTARY ROLES
Ratings assess as many seafood sources as possible in key
markets to provide information on the full spectrum of low to high
performance

Seafood Low High

performance

Certifications directly engage with

fisheries and farms and require them to
address social and environmental
challenges to reach a verified level of
performance identified by the certification
standard
 PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
CERTIFICATIONS RATINGS

Aquaculture Wild Capture Wild Capture Aquaculture & Aquaculture &

Wild Capture Wild Capture

Environmental & Environmental & Environmental & Environmental Environmental

Social Forced/Child Social
Labor

Individual farms Groups defined by Small-to- Regional Aquaculture zones;

or groups of stocks, gears, medium-scale aquaculture; specific specific fisheries
farms vessels fishermen fisheries
Includes chain of Includes chain of Includes chain of Ratings cover Ratings identify
custody custody custody and Fair full range of improvement
Trade premium low-to-high priorities
performance
Global
Benchmarks

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International benchmarks for credible certification and ecolabeling

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About the Marine
Stewardship
Council
 20 years of MSC

• Independent non-profit
organization founded by WWF
and Unilever.

• Operates two leading, global

standards to ensure credibility

• Fisheries Standard for

sustainable and well-managed
fishing

• Chain of Custody Standard to

ensure traceability (food
service, supply chain, retail)
Our Vision
is of the world’s oceans teeming
with life, and seafood supplies
safeguarded for this and future
generations.
Our Mission
is to use our ecolabel and fishery
certification program to contribute to
the health of the world’s oceans by
recognising and rewarding sustainable
fishing practices, influencing the choices
people make when buying seafood and
working with our partners to transform the
seafood market to a sustainable basis.
13
Scoring and standards

100
State of
the art

80 MSC Standards
Best Pass Unconditional
practice
Average score required

Conditions that
60 Is this working?
Pass Conditional require
Minimum
acceptable improvements

Assumed pull to
motivate Is this happening?
Does not meet Standard improvements

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How are we doing? Fisheries Growth
Let’s look at some data
Market Growth
Global Sum of products available in individual countries

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Over 400 certified fisheries

16% 94% 1,200+

of global marine catch of MSC certified fisheries had made at least one change to improve their operations Improvements since 2000 incl.
engaged with the MSC from acceptable levels of sustainability to global best practice, and to progress with habitat protection, bycatch
advances in best practice science and management reduction, increased stocks
 Minimizing impacts
How continued improvements
help to safeguard the health of
marine ecosystems

www.msc.org/global-impacts 18
Improvements in fishery performance
FIPs MSC
140 Principle 1
Fishery Improvement Projects 100 120
Principle 2
Principle 3

Number of Improvements
Database (FIP-DB) State of
100
the art

Completed
80

60
80
Best Pass Unconditional 40

practice 20

0
Average score required MSC Principle indicators

60
Minimum Pass Conditional
acceptable
1,200+ Improvements
‘MSC sees most improvements relating to
Does not
meet
harvest control rules, and information
Standard availability for unintended fishery impacts on
bycatch and ETP species’

-10 -5 0 5 10
Cannon et al, 2018, FIP-DB v1.0
Copyright © 2018 FishChoice, Inc., All rights reserved.
Improvement journey - Years 19
Improvements in
fishery performance
94% of MSC certified fisheries
were asked to make at least one
improvement to strengthen or
further monitor the sustainability of
their practices.

52% of the requested

improvements have been
completed and progress is ongoing
for the rest, demonstrating the
commitment certified fisheries
globally put in to ensure the future
health of marine environments.

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 Improvements in fishery performance – By Sector

& billfishes
Usually operating at industrial scales with
Cod, hakes &

High proportion of improvements on harvest

extensive research and monitoring, so rarely
haddocks

TunaSalmon
control rules. These fisheries span multiple
require improvements in harvest strategies.
jurisdictions and require RFMOs cooperation.
However, high number of improvements
Improvements often required to mitigate impacts
relating to mitigate impacts on ETP species
on ETP species.
and habitats.
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Improvements in fishery performance – By Topic

Between 2007 and 2013, 60

fisheries have closed off their
bycatch conditions.

Most of them implement new or

improved monitoring programs to
demonstrate they meet the MSC
bycatch requirements.

Improvements most commonly

required fisheries to gather more
information about how much
bycatch was being landed, or to
collect population data on non-
target or ETP species where the
fishery is operating.

www.msc.org/global-impacts 22
Trust and credibility is different for everyone – A
multi faceted approach is therefore needed
Stories
Peer Reviewed papers
UN and Global audience Global indicator landscape
international • Aichi
bodies Reporting • SDG 14
Governments
NGOs Data
Clients outputs
and access
MSC staff
Academic community
Funders Social media
‘This fishery got certified
Consumers and you won’t believe what
happened next….

MSC Data/Information Ecosystem

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Testing the MSC Theory of Change – High level overview

Overall the MSC is more likely to be achieving its mission and vision if…

1 Consumers buy MSC products 3 An increasing proportion of the

world’s fisheries are certified
54% of seafood consumers say they are prepared
to pay more for a certified sustainable seafood
product (2016 MSC Consumer Survey, Globescan)
n ~12-15k

2 Certified seafood is traceable

4 MSC fisheries make time-bound

improvements
94% of MSC certified fisheries were asked to make at
least one improvement to strengthen or further
monitor the sustainability of their practices.
Digital traceability – Concept development
Swedish top 5 species
Current system works
10000
8000
6000
BUT 4000
2000
0
salmon other herring prawns cod
• One up-One down visibility (all
species)
• Tracebacks are manual,
15/16 16/17 17/18
chasing paper trail
• No real-time data visibility
across supply entire supply
chain
• Audit frequency is very high to
maintain integrity

Fishery, Species,
tonnage, gear types etc

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Digital traceability - Concept development

Lots of activity in this space at the moment

At a tech level, Blockchain tech is emerging and other tech already
exists

At a data level, numerous dialogues happening globally

USAID, EU, Simp, Global dialogue on seafood traceability, SALT etc

MSC is currently also exploring what a concept for end to end

digital traceability might look like

How does MSC as a certification system fit in this space and what
advantages are there for MSC and our certified partners?

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Chain of Custody: Why it Matters

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Sustainable
Fisheries: Case
Studies

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MSC Certified Fisheries

Toothfish:
West Coast Endangered South African
Groundfish: Seabirds Saved Hake:
From Federal by Night
Low Tech Fix to
Disaster to Fishing
Protect Albatross
Sustainably
Managed
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Thank you!

For Media Inquiries contact MSC

Senior PR Manager, Jackie Marks
jackie.marks@msc.org
(202) 689. 5957
@JackieMarks

www.msc.org @MSCBlueFish