Benefits of Certification for Small-scale Fisheries - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 307

Chapter 15
Benefits of Certification for
Small-scale Fisheries

Meredith Lopuch

15.1 Introduction

This chapter considers the role that the process of Marine Stewardship Council
(MSC) assessment and certification may play in assisting small-scale fisheries to
achieve high standards of sustainability, and to enable them to demonstrate this.
Such fisheries may not always use the ecolabel secured from a successful certi-
fication assessment to label their products, but they may nevertheless be able to
secure a number of benefits from both the process of MSC assessment, and from
securing MSC certification. These benefits may include access to markets otherwise
unavailable, they may receive preferential local funding and increased standing in
their local and national contexts, and they may benefit from improved organisation
of the fishery management system. This chapter considers these issues, and looks
at some of the experience and evidence.
Ever since the MSC was first conceived, critics have contended that the pro-
gramme might not be accessible or applicable to small-scale fisheries (see Chapters
4 and 14). It has been suggested that the costs associated with certification would
be beyond the means of many small-scale fisheries, and also that certification could
be problematic for 'data-poor' fisheries in either developing or developed countries
(Langstaff 1997). Small-scale fishers comprise approximately 94% of the world's
fishers and produce nearly half of the global fish supply for human consumption
(McGoodwin 1994). Along the world's coastlines, these small-scale fisheries pro-
vide most of the protein and jobs for neighbouring communities, yet are heavily
threatened by coastal habitat destruction and pollution due to human activities on
land. In addition, these fisheries often operate in some of the most biologically
diverse and rich marine eco-regions on Earth.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), along with leading scientists from around
the world, developed the Global 200 - the eco-regions most important to global
biodiversity - and the WWF global network has an institutional commitment to
protecting these eco-regions. The MSC is an important tool to help address global
overfishing and thus help protect eco-regions. For the MSC to accomplish its goal