MSC standard ‘needs fundamental review’
Marine Stewardship Council certification should be a force for good – but it needs to reassess its approach.
This article originally appeared in Fishing News
National and international fishing policy moves slowly. Industry could potentially move much faster towards sustainability if the right opportunities and incentives are in place. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was set up to provide such an incentive, in the form of price premiums and market access, for fisheries that reached a sustainability standard. As the global overfishing crisis continues, the MSC’s role in fisheries sustainability remains crucial.
The UK and Ireland have enthusiastically embraced the MSC program since its establishment, with 16 fisheries certified and £1.26 billion of sales in MSC-certified products in 2021 alone.
Many MSC-certified fisheries represent best practice in sustainable fishing and deliver real economic benefits for those fisheries, providing compelling proof that the MSC program can be a force for good. But MSC is still not delivering on its promise across the board. Weaknesses in MSC standards and procedures, along with their inconsistent application by different assessment bodies, have led to a raft of controversial certifications, putting the MSC’s reputation in the spotlight and raising questions about the organisation’s credibility.
The MSC has faced criticism for several of its certifications. The most well-known of these include tuna fisheries in which purse seine nets set on Fish Aggregating Devices scoop up vast amounts of bycatch and juvenile catch and incidents of shark finning take place, but concerns regarding MSC certifications here in the UK have also sparked serious concern about the integrity of the label.
For example, Shetland’s scallop fishery was certified in 2012 and recertified in 2018, despite continued operations within Marine Protected Areas in Shetland’s inshore waters and habitats containing ‘Priority Marine Features’. This is entirely incompatible with any reasonable claim to ‘sustainability’. This was therefore highlighted by an objection by Open Seas, which also noted considerable procedural and factual errors on the part of the assessment body involved in undertaking the MSC evaluation.
Another fishery which has attracted significant concern is North Sea cod, which was certified by MSC in 2017 but lost its certification in 2019 as a result of stocks dropping below safe biological levels. Although the suspension of the certification demonstrates MSC’s ability to respond to changing circumstances, it also highlights that MSC ignored those who warned that North Sea stocks were still at historically low levels at the time of certification.
Examples such as these are concerning because they highlight that unsustainably caught fish are being marketed as sustainable. This is bad for the environment, bad for consumers who are being given guarantees that they cannot trust, bad for companies trying to make responsible sourcing decisions, and bad for certified fisheries that are genuinely sustainable yet risk being reputationally tarnished by association with others which arguably should not have been MSC certified.
The MSC ecolabel certifies high-impact industrial fisheries, such as scallop dredgers, yet remains too often inaccessible to their lower-impact counterparts, such as dive-caught scallop fisheries. This risks blocking the vital structural change towards lower impact fishing practices in the sector that the MSC should be actively facilitating. The exclusion of many small-scale and developing world fisheries because of high certification costs then prevents them from accessing key markets as many retailer sourcing policies now demand MSC certification. If this trend continues, there is a real risk that the MSC will simply serve to reaffirm existing power structures in the fishing industry by favouring higher impact, industrial-scale fisheries.
The challenges facing the MSC are undeniably complex, with different stakeholder groups calling for a number of different reforms. NGOs and campaigners highlight that many elements of the MSC’s standard lag behind best practice and allow unsustainable fisheries to secure certification. They also note that MSC certification is increasingly unfit for purpose because it fails to consider the human, social and climate impacts of fisheries alongside their impacts on target stocks. At the same time, the MSC is also facing concerns from certified fisheries about keeping pace with changing fisheries management requirements and avoiding the reputational risks – as well as market access implications – of losing a hard-won certification.
The MSC is currently concluding a Fisheries Standard Review, its five-yearly process of reviewing its requirements in light of evolving best practice in fisheries management. Its revised Standard has received MSC Board sign-off and will be published in October. Following the recent final round of public consultation, both industry and major global NGOs have raised serious concerns about the proposed new changes, and it remains to be seen whether these will be addressed in the finalised version.
The On The Hook (OTH) campaign has also raised broader concerns about the Fisheries Standard Review process not being capable of delivering the scope and scale of change that is truly needed. In part this is because stakeholder input is only accepted on pre-determined topics, but overwhelmingly it is because the process is too narrowly focussed. It is not just the Standard that needs a reset but the overall mindset, ideology, and operation of the MSC scheme.
In April of this year, On The Hook launched an external review of the MSC, with a broader remit, to kickstart a conversation about what stakeholders want from MSC and to develop practical recommendations as to how MSC might deliver that the necessary change. The goal is to create momentum for real change – On The Hook is not calling for further narrow tweaks to the MSC Standard but rather for a fundamental rethink of how MSC could fulfil the vital role it has to play.
It is in the interests of the fishing industry and the conservation sector alike that they engage with the calls for change. We strongly encourage all readers of Fishing News to participate in the first phase of On The Hook’s external review - a public consultation available at www.marinestewardshipreview.org which consists of a short set of simple questions and is open until the end of July - and work together with us to develop a constructive roadmap forwards for MSC reform.
This article was written by Amy Hammond, Manager and Head of Ocean and Blue Economy Practice at Seahorse Environmental.