Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Concern that other fisheries, such as a pot fishery, might also take significant
quantities of toothfish.
Some of these, such as chain-of-custody issue, the wider context of IUU fishing
on other toothfish stocks and the pot fishery were clearly outside the remit of
the certification and this was confirmed by the objections panel. Furthermore, the
objectors neither provided any information that had not already been considered
in the assessment, nor did they provide any evidence that information had been
ignored or misinterpreted. In the absence of new information, the certifiers could
only respond to the objectors with a detailed letter (on 9 December 2002) showing
where in their assessment report the various issues had been considered and scored
by the assessment team.
The objectors were not satisfied that the response had answered their objections
and filed a further objection on 4 January 2003. For the further objection, NET and
TAP were joined by Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defence Council and the
Sierra Club. The MSC objections procedure allows only those parties 'that previ-
ously lodged written submissions to the certification body during the certification
process and/or attended stakeholder meetings to which they were invited' to raise
merit objections, but allows any party (regardless of prior participation in the certi-
fication process) to file briefs in support of a permitted merit objection. It is silent,
however, on whether objectors should remain as originally lodged until they are
'allowed' by the MSC, or whether the objectors should remain the same in each
case. Of the five organisations listed on the further objection, only NET and TAP had
raised the original objection, and only NET, TAP and Greenpeace had participated
in the assessment process. The other major non-governmental organisations that
had participated in the process, WWF and BirdLife International were noticeably
absent from the objection and the further objection.
In a final twist, the further objection introduced a series of new issues, including
the issue of ray bycatch. This had not been mentioned in the original objection,
and in any case was already subject to a condition of certification. There was a
new allegation that CCAMLR's decision-making process was compromised by the
'political accommodation' between Argentina and the UK, that the certification
had not considered other CCAMLR areas such as subarea 48.2 or 48.4 and that the
certification had not considered the effect of any new longliner building on capacity
in the fishery (Cavalcanti
et al
. 2004).
The MSC has a duty under the objections procedure to respond to the objecting
party regarding the renewed objection and dismiss the objection if it determines
it to be patently frivolous or otherwise spurious. As detailed above, there were
problems with the objections in the case of this fishery - they did not provide
any new information or evidence and they were not internally consistent. These
issues were not considered by the MSC, which simply referred the complete issue,
including the additional points raised in the further objection, to the objections
panel.
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