Our Ocean 2019 gathered leaders from government, business and civil society to discuss solutions and actions for a clean healthy and productive ocean. It set the stage for bold action to safeguard our oceans — and the sense of urgency is mounting.
Climate change, overfishing, habitat loss and pollution are combining to place
our oceans under unprecedented pressure. As leaders search for ways to relieve
this pressure, radical policy changes such as the closure of large areas of our
oceans to commercial activity are seen, by some campaigners, as the only way to
curb overfishing and preserve habitats. But there are other solutions on the
table — and many of these include working with global business to find ways of
using our oceans sustainably while still delivering a profit, ensuring fishing
communities’ livelihoods are maintained, and providing invaluable nutrition for
a growing global population.
The UN Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) were
created with the explicit understanding that they couldn’t be achieved through
government action alone. Delivering these Goals — including Goal 14: Life Below
Water
— requires the mobilisation and transformation of businesses, consumers and
fishing communities, alongside government policies.
Business rethinking corporate purpose
Over the past year we’ve started to see many big businesses rethinking their
corporate
purpose
as they embrace society’s larger goals, responding to political and consumer
pressure. But the MSC programme, and other market-driven credible certification
programmes, have been early movers in this industry-wide change. Now in our 22nd
year, certified sustainable seafood from MSC is not only seen as a route into
markets with increasingly conscientious consumers, it is a way to drive change
on the water.
When IKEA, for example, committed to sourcing only MSC- and ASC-certified
seafood, it also invested into a fisheries-improvement project to improve the
sustainability of crayfish, with the goal of MSC certification. The
certification of Russian cod, pollock and salmon fisheries was, to a large
extent, motivated by demand from international businesses such as McDonald’s
and Nomad Foods — responsible for the Birds Eye, Findus and Iglo
brands. We’ve also seen significant strides taken in putting tuna fisheries on a
path to sustainability with the support of partners including Thai
Union
and Bolton.
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Retail and brand commitments are also increasing interest in sustainable fishing
in regions with historically lower levels of engagement. The commitments of
AEON and JCCU in Japan, for example, are slowly starting to
influence fisheries in the region to look to progress towards MSC certification.
Leaders for a Living Ocean
However, in recognition of the need to engage our partners more widely in our
mission to have 20 percent of global wild seafood catch engaged in the MSC
programme by 2020, we launched Leaders for a Living
Ocean at the Our Ocean summit in 2017. This
initiative included 27 leading seafood businesses and fishing organisations
making tangible and timebound commitments to safeguard our oceans through
sustainable seafood certification. The Leaders for a Living Ocean include
household names such as Aldi, Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Mars Petcare,
Eroski and IKEA; alongside hugely influential fishing organisations such as
the Western Australian Fishing Industry Council, Danish Fisheries
Producers Organization and Iceland Sustainable Fisheries. What started as
27 commitments has increased over the past three years to 40.
The commitments by the Leaders for a Living Ocean underpin the unifying power
of, and the ongoing growth in the MSC programme. Since 2017, the percentage of
the world’s wild seafood catch to be certified to the MSC’s international
standard for sustainable
fishing
has increased from 12 percent to 15 percent. This includes 30 percent more
MSC-certified white fish. With this, the volume of seafood sold with the MSC
label has increased by more 27 percent from 730,000 tonnes in 2016-17 to 1
million tonnes in 2018-19.
Encouragingly we’re also seeing in roads being made in the Global South, where
more than half global seafood supplies originate, but where historically fewer
fisheries have sought certification. Between 2017 and 2019 the number of
fisheries in the Global
South
engaged in the MSC programme increased from 59 to 124.
I applaud the organisations taking part in Leaders for a Living Ocean. They
deserve recognition for their efforts. With delivery of SDG 14 lagging
behind
other development goals, we all need to do more to commit to driving long
lasting change at a global scale.
Read about the commitments of each of the Leaders for a Living Ocean.
Published Oct 31, 2019 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET
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