“Why we should keep in mind the warnings of a Spanish monk to be on guard for the big fisheries industry and their claims for sustainability.”
Fool’s gold and the race to the bottom
Since 2017, after a vote of the General Assembly of the United Nations, we officially celebrate the 2nd of May as World Tuna Day. World Tuna Day is an initiative that was first started in 2011 by the PNA (Parties to the Nauru Agreement), 8 small Island states in the Western and Central Pacific, that stock in their waters approximately 50 per cent of the global skipjack of our big world-wide tuna stockpile for the canning industry.
This makes World Tuna Day strongly related to sustainable tuna fisheries. The PNA countries are frontrunners in sustainability. Their Vessel Day Scheme is an innovative way to manage their skipjack stocks. And with the marketing of Pacifical they were the first to successfully introduce an industrial scale tuna fishery under the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label.
So, World Tuna Day is a great yearly occasion to ask the question: what is the state of governance on sustainable tuna fisheries?
Don’t jump out of the window when you read this: I will try to give a simple and very partial answer to this difficult question. Just some points I would like to make. Of course, the answer to the question what is a sustainable tuna fishery, is only getting more complicated with the years. Sustainability has many faces, and to makes things worse, these faces are changing constantly. It can be hell for those who sincerely think that we should work for a sustainable future, and a blessing for those who are more interested in putting up a sustainable charade.
As you can read in my book, sustainability all started with an eighteenth-century Spanish monk called Martín Sarmiento in a Madrid monastery. Sarmiento, the David Attenborough of his time, was asked by the leading Spanish blue fin tuna monopoly of the house of Medina Sidonia, to thoroughly research into the question why their bluefin catches at the south coast of Spain were dwindling. The monk published his study in 1757. Though his advice was not very conclusive (he was convinced that tuna were fond of acorns, so oaks should be planted next to the shores to supply more food) he was the first to define the need for governance and management of the stocks. Only this would guarantee a sustainable future for the fish and fisheries, according to Sarmiento.
Fool’s gold which raised their own income in the short term, while destroying the source
Governance had to solve the tension that had always existed between fisheries industry and sustainability, the monk wrote. ‘…Fishermen are not remotely interested in the fact that tuna fishing was declining due to their actions, as long as they were able to reap large short-term profits…’ In the end this would also destroy business itself, ‘…with fool’s gold which raised their own income in the short term, while destroying the source.’ A simple but effective observation, and well considered a miracle for its time. A miracle for which Sarmiento deserves a sainthood, if you ask me.
Happy Monk?
So, is Martín Sarmiento a happy saint when from his heavenly cloud he surveys todays panorama of sustainability governance on tuna? On first sight one would think he should be, because even big tuna business itself is taking all kind of sustainability initiatives. Take the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), a powerful club that has been active since 2009 that represents 75% of the global canning industry. The ISSF research has been thorough and very useful. But when it comes to effectively practice sustainability policies, things tend to become blurry. Last month (April, 16) the ISSF published two ‘comprehensive reports’ for its members and others that might be interested: recommendations for both purse seine and longline fisheries pursuing Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. At first sight a helping hand of the big industry for those who would like to become certified by MSC, at this moment still the only certification standard that we can take seriously when it comes to sustainability in tuna fisheries.
But close reading reveals something quite different. ISSF advises on the MSC standards not to be used to enter an assessment for MSC certification but ‘intended to be used as a practical resource for purse-seine and longline fisheries in Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs)’. Quoting Monty Python: ‘And now for something completely different’…
FIPs
For those who do not know what FIPs are: these are projects that are increasingly popular to be applied in fisheries that want to improve their sustainability and getting access to markets, but have problems to reach the MSC standards. It is applied in small scale fisheries, as a sympathetic way to reach out and start a process that would end up with an application for MSC. But then the big industry conveniently captured the concept. They handle their FIPs as an alternative for going straightforward into MSC certification assessment. A FIP is far less costly and lacks an independent auditor that keeps track and trace of the improvements. Meanwhile, a FIP gives the industry a green face. Many traders and retailers take it for granted that a FIP is a kind of sustainability guarantee, just like the membership of ISSF itself.
Well, it definitely is not. At best it is no more than a road towards sustainability. And many times, less, because you always hear when a FIP is started, but seldom when it ends in an assessment for MSC certification. FIPs have a natural tendency to evaporate in the tropical sun. Shortly before ISSF came with their recommendations, an investigation on FIPs was published by CEA consulting (2020 Global Landscape Review of Fishery Improvement Projects), an excellent research that I recommend to everybody interested in FIPs. The study shows that of the 250 FIPs until now 92% never ended up in an assessment for MSC certification. Excluding the WWF projects in Indonesia, only two of them where tuna FIPs. After the first two years of their existence, most FIPs usually disappear from the radar. Verifying that products are sourced from FIPs is exceedingly difficult and rarely required. Greenwashing was a likely consequence, just as creating non-tariff trade barriers.
A FIP can work as a MSC-light, adding to a race to the bottom of sustainability claims
The fact of the matter is that until today many big companies instead of creating more sustainability of fisheries under MSC certification, effectively use FIPs as an alternative sustainability claim that avoids MSC certification. A MSC-light, if you like. Not at all a thing that is very supportive for the label one would say, let alone for those companies who took the trouble to apply for the costly MSC-certification. It only ads to a race to the bottom of sustainability claims.
APR
Unfortunately enough, this kind of abuse by big companies is not an exception. One other example is the Spanish Organization of Associated Producers of Large Tuna Freezers (OPAGAC). It is no exaggeration to state that OPAGAC, with its excellent lobby apparatus, is an industrial powerhouse that for a large part effectively decides the external tuna policies of the European Commission and management organisations like ICCAT. Not surprisingly OPAGAC and ISSF work closely together. OPAGAC introduced its own FIP. But it even went one step further: it created its own label, Atún de Pesca Responsable (APR).
So, what exactly is ‘responsibly’ fished tuna, you might wonder. That is tuna fished with boats where a standard is complied for labor and social rights for the crew members, checked by an independent Spanish auditor. OPAGAC is very proud of its APR, and with reason. Not only was it a hurdle that did not take much effort, since the working conditions on the Spanish boats already were excellent. But the APR is a great selling point for their clients, who mistake this social responsibility issue for an ecological sustainability standard. A clever kind of mixed up sustainability claim, much cheaper than MSC and maybe even cheaper than a FIP.
There is more. OPAGAC itself is very honest about it on its website: ‘The APR is intended to form the base for the development of a CEN (European Standardisation Committee) standard, which OPAGAC expects to become a reference so that the European market can demand these requirements for tuna imports.’
Riding the waves of indignation about slavery and deplorable working conditions in Asia, OPAGAC is setting up a non-tariff trade barrier
Cleverly riding the waves of indignation about slavery and deplorable working conditions in Asia, OPAGAC is setting up not less than a non-tariff trade barrier. Already for years OPAGAC has been trying to block their European home market for the import of tuna loins from their Asian competitors. This has led to (almost literally) fights with the Spanish canners, who like to buy more and cheaper loins as raw material. If APR is accepted as a CEN standard, OPAGAC has effectively blocked their home-market for these imports. And since the officials and politicians on EU level can hardly distinguish the APR from a real sustainability certification, they might well succeed.
A race to the bottom of sustainability claims: creating your own simulated sustainability label that narrows the standard definition to social conditions you were applying anyway, avoiding the need for MSC certification to put up your green face, undermining your competition that did a costly assessment to apply for MSC, give your buyers an argument to feel sustainable when buying your stuff and meanwhile creating a non-tariff barrier you were longing for.
Fortunately, not everything is dark and cynical when it comes to the sustainable governance of our global tuna stocks. We managed to save our Atlantic bluefin from extinction. There are a lot of efforts to make the work in the tuna management organisations or RFMOs more effective, though there still is a long road to go. The notion for the need of sustainable tuna resources is getting more and more common in the chain of stakeholders, like processors, trade, retailers and finally consumers. MSC is still expanding in the tuna fisheries, and increasingly aware of the room for improvement in their certification schemes. We might hope for a trend that the retail-sector is getting more involved in the scheme and in defending their sustainable interests in the RFMOs.
Happy World Tuna Day. But always keep Martín Sarmiento’s wise words in the back of your mind.