The Case for Fishcoin: The Challenges of Improving Sustainability of the Seafood Industry
We hear so much about sustainability these days. The word has become so overused and abused that people have become as confused as trying to understand which mobile phone plan is the best value for them. And this is part of the challenge. However, in simple terms, we understand that approximately 90% of the seafood we eat comes from small-scale fishers and farmers and that around 1 in 10 people on the planet are involved in this industry. It makes sense when we consider 70% of the planet is covered by our oceans and 97% of the earth’s water is seawater. So, how do we get to these producers to help them manage our seafood resources?
There are some non-profit organisations (NPOs) that were setup with the prime objective to help this cause of seafood sustainability, ie., the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which was established in 1997 through a partnership between WWF and Unilever, and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), also a WWF initiative, initiated in 2014 to tackle sustainability in the aquaculture industry. The MSC reflected a wider concern around seafood sustainability in the 1990s that recognized the limitations of state-driven management in regions such as North America and Europe. The MSC has grown massively over the last decade due to this rise in awareness around seafood sustainability leading to increased demand from both consumers and supermarkets. In real terms, MSC certified fisheries now represent over 12% of global stocks, with more than 300 certified fisheries in 34 countries. However, this expansion and success has caused the MSC to face considerable criticism on two main fronts related to its accessibility and its ability to foster continual environmental improvement, directly influencing the scheme’s credibility. The ASC, and indeed all other certifying bodies for fisheries and farming face similar issues.
These NPOs are seen as largely inaccessible for small-scale and developing world fishers (which remember, represent in excess of 90% of global seafood production) because of the organizational, administrative and financial burden of the certification process. The consequences of their “exclusion” are considerable given the contribution of these producers to global catch and North-South trade. There have been some changes and adaptations made by many of these certifying partly aimed at simplifying and reducing the cost of the assessment process. However, as simplification cannot come at the expense of rigor, maintaining the credibility of these NPOs means that involvement of any producer is contingent on compliance with their requirement for robust and consistent procedures.
The second main criticisms of these NPOs is that, at least for wild fisheries, they have not led to a measurable reduction of fish stock decline, and that overfished stocks continue to be certified. Critics have pointed out that the continual improvement of overall environmental performance has been complicated by a lack of flexibility in interpretation of the assessment process and the certification of only the best performing fisheries — which are mainly operated by large scale professional fishing operators in developed nations.
It is clear that the largest gains are most likely to be made by the great bulk of fisheries and farms that do not make it through to full assessment so how do these NPOs maintain the stringency required to stimulate continuous improvement for those producers that are already certified, but also to provide adequate incentives for the worst performing small scale operators in developing nations to enter into an assessment.
This is a great motive force for our work developing mFish and the Fishcoin ecosystem, as to have meaningful impact on global seafood sustainability we need to have scale, and the focus needs to be on the volume that is clearly sitting with the 90+% of small scale producers in developing nations. There are also other grass roots groups now being formed, like the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative (ASIC), with a prime focus to manage this issue.
The signs are positive with many producers in the developed nations working alongside key certifying bodies to demonstrate improved management of fishing and aquaculture operations. These act as great models for the developing nations that deliver the main volume of our seafood, and with the growth of decentralised blockchain powered ecosystems like Fishcoin, and grass roots organisations like ASIC, we hope to see sustainable seafood coming from wild fisheries and aquaculture for many generations to come.
