Market-Based Mechanisms – Improving Fisheries Management? - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 192

Although IUU fishing has always occurred, it has emerged as one of the major
issues facing fish stocks and other components of the marine environment in recent
years. Major efforts, such as the FAO's International Plan of Action, have imple-
mented measures to control IUU fishing, with some limited success. In the case of
Patagonian toothfish, the measures have included increased enforcement and better
catch documentation via a scheme operated by the Convention for the Conserva-
tion of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). The catch documentation
measure dovetails into a growing demand for much more rigorous and complete
information about the source and identity of seafood products for public health and
consumer information reasons (see below with respect to ecolabelling). However,
the system operated by CCAMLR has a number of crucial limitations (Lack & Sant
2001) that create loopholes for illegal operators. For example, a number of nations
have declined to participate in the Catch Documentation Scheme (CDS), and it only
applies to catches taken in the area covered by CCAMLR.
The perpetrators of environmental crime may come from any country. But there
is little doubt that ineffective legal regimes and inadequate capacity to monitor
and enforce the law, a situation more common in developing countries, mean that
criminals are more likely to base their operations in such countries or use such
countries as a channel for illegally sourced seafood products.

9.5 The private sector and demand control

The regime that facilitates and controls the production and trade in fisheries products
is of great interest to the private sector for obvious reasons. Not only does the
system provide the framework in which commerce can operate, but it presents a
wide variety of incentives and hurdles which can affect the viability and profitability
of commercial activities. In the same manner as governments move to control areas
of market failure, the private sector creates systems to compensate for perceived or
real inadequacies in government control, and to satisfy consumer demand.
The motivations for the involvement of non-government organisations (both busi-
ness and not-for-profit groups) in the supply of seafood products are many and
varied. Advocacy NGOs (non-government organisations) may seek to ensure sus-
tainable use, protect biodiversity, and in some cases, promote equity in the allocation
of resources so that livelihoods are protected and the living conditions of fishing
communities are improved. For business NGOs, there is an interest in maintaining
a sustainable seafood supply from a purely commercial perspective, but there are
additional motivations that may include:

protecting access to the resource - without access to fish resources (or suitable
sites in the case of aquaculture) there is no seafood business;

protecting an allocated share of the resource - there are growing pressures in
many countries on the level of resource allocation to the commercial sector, and
between the commercial and recreational fishing sectors;