Zwerdling and Williams highlight several shortcomings of MSC
sustainability certification, including the conditional certification of fisheries
that are not sustainable but which may become sustainable if identified
shortcomings are addressed. MSC
considers that conditional certification provides an incentive to improve. However, as Susanna Fuller, co-director of
marine programs at Canada's Ecology Action Centre in Halifax told Zwerdling and Williams, that’s
like telling a child, "You've been really bad, but I'll give you a
lollipop, and then I want you to show me how much better you can be…It just
doesn't work, right? You've already got the lollipop."
Rupert Howes, the MSC's London-based CEO, defends the
lollipop approach and says that there is evidence that conditional certification works. He points out that
if MSC were in the business of only giving lollipops to perfectly behaved
fisheries they wouldn’t hand out many lollipops!
Even if Howes is right about the lollipop effect, the
“certified sustainable seafood” label is misleading to consumers. The MSC blue logo does not necessarily mean
that a product comes from a sustainable fishery. Instead it may come from a fishery, such as
the Canadian Atlantic long-line Sword fish fishery, which catches two sharks
which are discarded, a significant proportion dead, for each swordfish
landed. Or it may come from a depleted
stock such as offshore South African Hake which, if recovering at all, has a
long way to go before the fishery can be considered sustainable. Or it may come from the Ross Sea Toothfish fishery, a fish stock about which not enough is even known to determine what a
sustainable catch would be. These
fisheries do not meet widely accepted sustainability conditions, but products
from these fisheries display the MSC blue “certified sustainable seafood” sealof approval.
The second contribution to MSC shortcomings is a paperpublished in the current edition of the scientific journal BiologicalConservation by Claire Christian of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition,
and colleagues. They reviewed the 19
formal objections to MSC certifications made over the last 15 years in the
course of certifying more than 170 fisheries.
These objections are costly to file and are subject to a complicated quasi-legal
MSC process which has rejected all but one objection.
Claire Christian and colleagues conclude from their study
that the MSC principles for sustainable fishing are too lenient and
discretionary, and allow for overly generous interpretation by third party
certifiers (private for-profit consulting companies) and MSC hired
adjudicators. Contrary to MSC claims,
MSC-certified fisheries are not all sustainable and certified fisheries are not
necessarily improving (the hoped-for lollipop effect). Even further, they note that genetic
detection studies show that not all products with the MSC logo actually come
from MSC certified fisheries.
Consequently they conclude that the MSC label may be misleading both
consumers and conservation funders. They
consider that if MSC does not overcome these problems their blue certified
sustainable seafood logo will be characterized as nothing more than
“bluewashing”.
