The Marine Stewardship Council Programme - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 83

of the market to reward and promote sustainable fisheries management and to em-
power consumers to make the best environmental choice in their seafood purchases.
Getting the price signals and incentives right and transforming markets is not an
alternative to better public policy but it appears to be an increasingly effective and
powerful tool to complement policy interventions and regulatory measures that are
employed by national governments and international jurisdictions.
It is for these reasons that Unilever PLC, at the time one of the largest pur-
chasers of frozen seafood, and the international conservation organisation WWF
joined forces in 1997 to establish the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Both
organisations had a long-term interest in the future health and productivity of the
marine environment and both wanted to see what a credible marine certification and
ecolabelling programme could deliver in terms of shifting global seafood markets
to a more sustainable footing.
This chapter provides an overview of the MSC, the organisation's history, evo-
lution, governance and track record to date, highlighting the key challenges the
organisation has faced over its first 8 years of independent existence. The chapter
builds on the earlier descriptions of the programme (such as those within Phillips
et al . 2003) and concludes with a review of the MSC's strategic priorities for
the coming 3-5 years and an assessment of what might be achieved over this
period.

4.2 The MSC background and history

Whilst Unilever and WWF's precise motives and rationale for working collab-
oratively differed, both organisations wanted similar outcomes - to secure the
long-term health and productivity of the oceans. For Unilever, the wake-up call
came with the collapse of the Grand Banks cod fishery off Newfoundland in the
early 1990s. This once plentiful cod fishery has disappeared along with an es-
timated 40 000 livelihoods. And although the cod fishery has been closed since
1995, the cod have not returned (Kurlansky 1999). For Unilever (owner at that
time of the Birds Eye and Iglo brands) the implications were obvious - no cheap,
plentiful and secure supplies of frozen seafood meant no frozen fish fingers,
no business and no profits. Ensuring the sustainability of their core raw mate-
rial base (frozen seafood) upon which their entire business model depended was
clearly a strategic business priority, and enlightened self-interest of the very best
kind.
For WWF, part of the motivation was a growing frustration with traditional ap-
proaches to public policy reform and advocacy to deliver real, lasting and measur-
able improvements in the marine environment. What could a credible and market-
based programme achieve to complement ongoing policy reform and advocacy
work?