Drivers of Success and Performance in Fisheries Moving Towards MSC Certification

Speaker: Jennifer Rasal is a Senior Data Science Officer, Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)

With growing concerns about global overfishing, market-based eco-certification programs like the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) can incentivise adoption of sustainable practices. The MSC is an international non-profit, non-governmental organisation (NGO) which sets a Fisheries Standard for environmentally sustainable fishing. Fishing fleets are key stakeholders of the voluntary program and often demonstrate improvements to their fishing practises to achieve certification. Previous studies have investigated drivers of improvement in market-driven fishery improvement projects, but here we analysed a larger more comprehensive, standardised set of measures of progress against a broad range of drivers We considered the relative influence that market demand, fisheries management, socio-economic and fishery-specific drivers have on MSC certification success in 208 fisheries. National fishery management intensity, percentage of MSC’s proportion of a species global catch and landed value were the strongest drivers of successful certification demonstrating the importance of socio-economic pressures on transiting to MSC certification