Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to certification in April 2004, the first developing country fishery to become MSC
certified (www.msc.org). A more sophisticated version of the model is currently
being used by the CFP for fisheries in Japan, Africa, Vietnam, Russia and India. We
are hopeful that over the next few years at least a few fisheries identified through
these projects will be successful in the MSC certification process. However, even
if the scoping work does not lead to successful MSC certifications, the scoping,
awareness raising and the involvement in the MSC certification process may result
in significant improvements and/or benefits within individual fisheries.
15.3
Benefits of the certification process
The most important lesson learned through the years of CFP field experience is
that small-scale fisheries use the process and deliverables - the pre-assessment
and full assessment reports - of MSC certification to address significant issues
within their fishery such as sustainability and political challenges. The resulting
environmental, social and political benefits are equally important to, and in many
cases more important than, the potential market benefits of certification in small-
scale fisheries. We term these benefits as the 'hidden benefits of certification'.
The process of MSC certification can be classified into a number of formal
and informal steps. The formal steps of the MSC certification process include the
pre-assessment and the full assessment. These steps are conducted by an MSC-
accredited certifier and the methodology is governed by the MSC (May et al . 2003,
www.msc.org, see Chapter 4). However, many fisheries work to prepare themselves
for the pre-assessment and the full assessment (Chaffee et al . 2003), and this work
constitutes the informal steps of certification. The CFP engages with two of these
informal steps - scoping and transitional work. Scoping is the process of selecting
candidate fisheries, and during this step preliminary outreach to the fishery com-
munity is conducted and data on the fishery are gathered. Transitional work refers
to the step between pre-assessment and full assessment where the fishery works on
the changes recommended in the MSC pre-assessment. The hidden benefits of the
MSC certification process can be demonstrated throughout the process of certifica-
tion, but are concentrated during the scoping, pre-assessment and transitional work
steps.
It is important to note the MSC pre-assessment may be kept confidential be-
tween the client fishery and the MSC-accredited certifier. This allows a fishery to
understand how well they would do in the certification process, and to proceed with
improvements without having to publicly expose their issues and potentially lose
market opportunities or suffer bad publicity as a result. In order for small-scale
fisheries to benefit from the process of certification they often need to be willing
to waive this confidentiality, and in the experience of the CFP this is rarely an
issue. Many small-scale fisheries undergoing pre-assessment choose to make the
pre-assessment a public process. This may be because the certifier cannot get a
Search WWH ::




Custom Search