Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
matter was that more involvement of the membership of the cooperatives would
have been preferable because throughout the whole assessment process the certifica-
tion team and COBI only dealt with the administration boards and the FEDECOOP
officials. Those people in turn transferred little information on the details and the
potential of certification to their constituencies. As a result fishers knew this was a
good thing, but they knew little about what benefits they could expect. The celebra-
tion of the certification locally, in the fishing communities, was never undertaken,
due to a lack of sponsorship, although there was a petition for this by the fishers.
Even in these cooperatives that have good organisation and representative boards,
the flow of information could have been improved and stronger support from the
fishers themselves would have been secured.
It is hard to evaluate how this reflected on the support for better commercialisa-
tion of the lobster products within new markets, but the inability to commercialise
certified lobster into the market was one of the most frustrating aspects of the
process that followed the MSC certification. All groups involved including
the cooperatives and FEDECOOP initially considered that certification would make
it easier to finalise purchasing agreements. But in reality, the current marketing sys-
tem provides very good returns and this precluded the development of new markets.
While there is a risk of over-dependency on Asian markets and their economy, the
existing market synergy is hard to break without enough new clients and suffi-
cient additional volume of certified product. Only in this situation there will be
an opportunity for new markets to be developed that pay more for the certified
product than for the non-certified lobsters. If there is no price increment, then there
is no incentive to develop new markets, particularly when there is no capacity to
provide them with certified product that is already selling well into established
markets.
References
Agnew, D., Grieve, C., Orr, P., Parkes, G. & Barker, N. (2006)
Environmental benefits
resulting from certification against MSC's principles & criteria for sustainable fishing.
Report by Marine Resources Assessment Group Ltd, London, UK.
Ayala, Y., Gonzalez-Aviles, J.G. & Espinoza-Castro, G. (1988) Biologıa y pesca de langosta
en el Pacıfico Mexicano. In:
Los Recursos Pesqueros del Paıs
, pp. 251-286. Secretarıa
de Pesca, Mexico, D.F.
COBI (Comunidad y Biodiversidad) (2000)
Community-based sustainable fisheries in Baja
California: a pre-investment analysis to start a fisheries certification program.
Final
Report submitted to Word Wildlife Fund-US, Endangered Seas Campaign, Community
Fisheries Program and Word Wildlife Fund-Mexico, Gulf of California Program in Fulfil-
ment of Grants LM98 and SO42. Available at: COBI http://www.cobi.org.mx/ [accessed
on 23 February 2008].
Ramade, M. & Garcıa R. (2005)
A report on market characteristics of the Baja California
spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus)
. Fisheries and Commercialization Departments,
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