At a moment in time when good news has felt harder to find and may be all the more welcome, a report by CEA Consulting, released March 25, finds some good news for fisheries around the world.
The 2020 Global Landscape Review of “Fishery Improvement Projects,” so-called “FIPs,” examines how this approach to better fishery management has changed since 2015, the factors that lead to a FIP’s success, and common challenges FIPs face, wherever in the world they are being implemented.
What is a Fishery Improvement Project?
A FIP is a collaborative effort among multiple stakeholders whose main aim is to reverse environmentally unsustainable practices in a given commercial fishery, whether it is large or small, nearshore or offshore. FIPs typically include an agreement and plan for improvement between a combination of private sector actors, representatives from fishing communities, government agencies and non-for-profit organizations with a shared interest in environmentally and, more recently, socially responsible fishing. A successful FIP is predicated on the idea that a producer, processor and trader of seafood products will be incentivized to use more sustainable practices if it has reliable access to a market that seeks and is willing to purchase a seafood that, at a minimum, does less damage to the environment and, better still, can ensure human welfare is not compromised in its production.
Why is this important?
Fishing at sea has proven difficult for governments to manage on their own, so the private sector needs to be constructively engaged in improving management. Currently, between 30-40 percent of wild fish stocks are either considered overfished or have already crashed, which is bad for the health of the overexploited fish themselves as well as the greater ocean ecosystem, of which they are a critical part.
Yet demand for wild caught fish will only increase as the global population and its “middle class” increases. Today, less than 15 percent of fish pulled from the ocean has been certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council or has been given a “green” rating by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. FIPs are deliberately designed to increase this number—that is, to increase the supply of seafood that the industry and consumers can trust originates from a sustainable source.”
The report was published on March 25 on the Our Shared Seas website. At this link you can download the full report, a detailed summary for those who are working to implement these projects, and an executive summary for the seafood industry. The summaries are available in multiple languages: Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and English.
The report combines data on project performance with insights from more than 250 project implementers and other stakeholders.
Key findings include:
- The number of FIPs continues to grow worldwide, from 83 in 2014 to 136 in 2019. Seafood buyers seeking products to meet their sustainable seafood policies have been a key driver of this growth and have a responsibility to use their influence to drive better environmental outcomes in FIPs.
- Industry support of FIPs has increased, with seafood companies now leading at least 70 of the active FIPs. That this is no longer a civil society, NGO-led approach is an important finding.
- More FIPs are reporting improvements today than in 2015. Specifically, the number of FIPs reporting change on the water and achieving certification has doubled in the past five years.
- FIPs are being implemented in increasingly difficult fisheries in the Global South, which affects the time it takes to achieve their objectives. In countries with relatively weaker fishery management capacity, achieving sustainable performance may take 10 years or more.
- Support systems, including FisheryProgress have developed rapidly to provide industry with information to evaluate FIP progress.
“FIPs are engaging a wider range of species, many of which are in complicated socio-economic and governance contexts,” said Max Levine, a director at CEA Consulting and a principal author of the report. “FIP implementers are adapting by focusing on collective impact to drive policy change or on engaging fishing communities to deliver social and economic benefits.”
The report also reveals that social issues are an emerging priority, with nearly one in five FIPs on FisheryProgress.org reporting on social activities, such as efforts to increase local community livelihoods or reduce potential human rights violations. “FIP implementers are increasingly attentive to the reality that fisheries are about people and communities, as well as resources and the environment,” said CEA Senior Associate John Thomas, a principal author of the report. “But FIPs need more and better data to understand how their work affects fishing families and communities.”
The analysis was commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
“Foundations invested early in fishery improvement projects because they bring industry, nonprofits, and governments together to conserve a resource they all need,” said Teresa Ish, program officer at the Walton Family Foundation. “It’s encouraging to see more business engagement in in the process because it’s a bottom-line issue for them. What’s good for the fishery and the environment is also good for their bottom lines – we encourage industry to take an even larger role in fishery improvement going forward.”
For questions about the report, please contact CEA at fips@ceaconsulting.com.
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