Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
responsible fishery managers or fishery participants. The failure to include the
fishery perspective seems at least self-serving on the part of the MSC and clearly
calls into question its motives and conclusions.
13.7.4
Continuous improvement of participating fisheries
The Wildhavens report recommended that the MSC 'implement a system to con-
tinue to raise the bar for what constitute best practices for new fisheries entering the
system at the same time that it develops incentives for already certified fisheries to
continuously improve beyond their initial best practices score'. In 2005, the MSC's
roadmap for its Quality and Consistency programme discussed above states: 'Since
its inception the MSC fishery certification program has been underpinned by a con-
scious commitment to continuous improvement'. However, the term 'continuous
improvement' appears to be limited to requiring fisheries to achieve and maintain a
score of 80 on all relevant performance indicators and not to improve upon scores
above 80. The MSC recently reaffirmed that position in a memorandum to client
fisheries in which it stated: 'The MSC does not have a policy intent to continually
ratchet up required performance over time. We would expect the standard to change
to some degree over time in response to new information about sustainability, es-
pecially in the Principle 2 ecosystem area, but only to the extent that such changes
are typically reflected by fishery managers in response to new information within
their own management systems as part of an adaptive learning process. The Board
does intend to have a clear policy statement produced in the first half of 2007 that
articulates these ideas'.
For client fisheries, the outcome of each of these reform agenda issues discussed
above is critically important in determining whether the MSC process will become
affordable, predictable and consistent, or whether political tensions, particularly
among NGOs, will result in shifting, higher standards, perpetual uncertainty with
the assessment process, and escalating costs and risks for fishery participants. The
MSC's consistent, and troubling, approach of including NGOs and excluding client
fisheries from policy development on these key matters could be an unfortunate
indicator of the direction in which the MSC is heading.
13.7.5
Improving the assessment process for
participating fisheries
In addition to keeping a watchful eye on the MSC's reform agenda, APA will con-
tinue advocating for basic programme improvements to correct programme flaws
as expressed in the Alaska pollock assessment. APA considers that the certification
process must improve in the following three critical areas:
First, prior to the Alaska pollock fishery entering assessment for its 5-year re-
certification in 2010, the MSC assessment process should be streamlined and
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