Marine Stewardship Council

FISHY POLITICS

It seems impossible to imagine that the world could stand by and watch the demise of its greatest renewable food source through bad management, irresponsibility, illegal practices and political stalemate. If that food were rice or wheat there would be an international outcry. We would be able to see what was happening before our eyes and intervene to stop it. We would force supermarkets, governments and food processors to prevent the loss of these vital foodstuffs. We would not tolerate the culprits and they would lose their right to plunder.

Of course, rice and wheat are not threatened. The endangered food in question is fish. It was once thought that the sea was an inexhaustible source of food. 'The harvest of the sea' was a wonder of the natural world until only very recently. Today, read through any recent newspaper and you will find it contains alarming references to the depletion of global fish stocks and the debate on how to reverse the decline. And it is a dramatic decline, even when set in the context of general environmental degradation of recent decades. Scientists' estimates of the state of the world's seafood resources, at their most positive, tell us that at least 60 per cent of the world's fish are badly managed, overexploited, severely depleted or in fragile recovery. The figure is rising all the time and 70-80 per cent is probably nearer the truth. How has this crisis crept up on us?

There are several reasons. The growth of technology has been a major factor. Bigger boats, more powerful engines, developments in radar and sophisticated refrigeration systems mean that today many fishing operators can stay out at sea for longer, travel further, locate fish more easily and freeze them on board for weeks at a time. Fishing has ceased to be a lottery - often, if the shoals do not appear on the radar the nets are not let out. When they are, their size and indiscriminate design mean they swallow up everything in their path. The problem is that, unlike rice or wheat, which are exploited on land, we cannot see what is happening. Overfishing happens out of sight and therefore has often been out of mind.

Another culprit is the political climate in which debate about saving fish stocks takes place. John Gummer, who brings a unique insight to these issues, having been both Fisheries Minister and the UK Secretary of State for the Environment, describes the farce of a politician's position in a body such as the EU Council of Fisheries Ministers vividly: "Every minister who sits around that council table is there as the representative of his national fishermen. It is his job to ensure that they get as large a share as possible of the fish that are to be divided out. Even if the fish are not really there, he has to obtain his quota. It is not surprising that conservation takes a back seat."

Therein lies the problem. There are votes in fishermen, but not in fish. What minister can be praised for telling their national parliament that they have agreed not to fish and have made concessions on the national slice of the cake? Especially if no other nation's minister has made the same concessions. The current Minister of State, Elliot Morley, a conservationist at heart, has paid a heavy price with the UK industry for trying to save stocks as much as fishermen. He should be commended for trying, even if the EU's political compromises mean that, as usual, ministers are on dangerous environmental ground by again failing to match the gravity of the scientific advice they have received with sufficiently tough conservation measures. They do not seem to recognise that unless the fish are saved (which means tough and unpopular political decisions) there will be no fishermen left to represent. Mr Morley sees this, but some of his fellow EU ministers do not. Perhaps many of them hope they will soon have moved on to other ministries. The fish must hope so too.

The political fudge that often characterises fisheries management may only have recently hit newspaper front pages, but it is not a new phenomenon. Even as far back as 1756, Henry Fielding recognised the immensity of the problem. In his Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon he wrote, "While a fisherman can break through the strongest meshes of an Act of Parliament, we may be assured that he will learn so as to contrive his own meshes that the smallest fry will not be able to swim through them."

Ominously, he continued, "Of all the animal foods with which man is furnished there are none so plenty as fish. If this be true of rivers, it is much truer of the sea shores which abound with such immense variety of fish that the curious fisherman, after he has made his draft, often culls only the daintiest part and leaves the rest of his prey to perish on the shore."

What has changed? Nothing, although the problem is now much more serious and on a bigger and global scale. Mix the politics and the technology of fishing together and we begin to understand why we face the very real prospect of the loss of our favourite fish species. This will be a tragedy for Europe and America, where fish is becoming more popular by the day and consumption of seafood is rising significantly. But nowhere will the calamity be greater than in the developing world, where fish are a vital source of protein and small fishing communities often provide the only economic activity that keeps coastal towns alive. How shameful it is that, having presided over the loss of our own fish, the EU is now busy granting licences to European boats to plunder the seas off West Africa to satisfy our continued greed - the prognosis for Africa to maintain its own industry is bleak indeed. This is where the argument ceases to be political and becomes one of basic morality.

Politics and technology combined lead us to our third culprit - the marketplace - which sanctions overfishing by allowing the sale of endangered fish for profit. The problem is that the market is about today and tomorrow and maybe next week, but certainly not about ten years' time. The market needs the fourth dimension - time. It needs to take into account what it requires in the future as well as what it needs now. At present, however, the market also offers more hope than the other two culprits for reversing the decline. By reforming the marketplace for fish, we can all do our bit, from the impotent politician to the concerned consumer.

It was in their understanding of the market that conservationists and industrialists alike saw that they had a common interest in changing its terms of operation. What environmentalists and scientists were warning of, and the politicians were struggling with, became a matter for the market. This led to the creation of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an international charity dedicated to saving the world's fish stocks.

The MSC concept is very simple. Fisheries around the world apply to be independently assessed against the rigorous MSC environmental standards, which were created through widespread international consultation in the late 1990s. If they pass, products from certified fisheries win the right to use the MSC environmental label on their products. This concept has proved successful for forests with the Forest Stewardship Council label appearing on timber products, so why not fish? Fish are harder than forests in that they move from one national jurisdiction into another without flags on their fins, but so far the MSC seems to be working where governments have failed.

Originally founded as a green-business partnership by the far-sighted conservation group WWF and Unilever, one of the world's largest seafood buyers, the MSC is now fully independent of its founders and over 160 products carry the MSC label in ten countries. New products are appearing every week. The consumer is empowered with the necessary information to make the best environmental choice in seafood. The label will become a gold standard below which major supermarkets and seafood companies will be reluctant to purchase fish. Indeed, Unilever has made a pledge to source all its fish from sustainable sources by 2005. Sainsbury's supermarkets recently made a similar commitment for 2010. It seems a long way off, but in the context of the 250 years of overfishing it is only moments away. Independent eco-labelling can achieve what politics cannot, providing real commercial incentives for improvements in fisheries management. If there is an economic advantage to being MSC approved, then fishery managers will jump at the chance. This is why some 40 fisheries around the world are now vying to join the seven fish stocks already certified to the MSC standard.

It is this ability of the MSC to unite conservationists, the industry, scientists, forward-looking politicians and, more importantly, shoppers that must have persuaded John Gummer to become the organisation's first chairman in 1998. Under his leadership, the MSC has perhaps achieved already what years of EU fishing negotiations as a minister could not.

The MSC cannot, however, change the world alone. Market incentives through environmental labelling are only part of the answer. Politicians must create a regulatory framework that allows fisheries to comply with the MSC standard. Fishermen will not thank them if they fail. The MSC will create winners, but also losers. In doing so, the politicians can also be held more accountable. In a sense, if people will not make this a moral decision, the MSC programme will make it a commercial one.

In 1992, the Canadian Grand Banks, one of the richest sources of cod in the world, collapsed overnight after repeated warnings from scientists that the fish were overexploited. Forty thousand jobs were lost and the local community is still struggling - the cod never came back so neither did the jobs. The fishery remains closed today. One of the most memorable scenes from that disastrous and tragic episode was the television coverage of furious fishermen barricading their Fisheries Minister in his office, screaming and banging on the door. It was a frightening spectacle.

It is a scene worth remembering next time a Fisheries Minister avoids tough conservation measures in order to save his national fishermen. In the long run, voting for fish rather than fishermen is a safer political bet, not least for the fishermen's jobs that we all have a duty to protect. There are no votes at all in political fudge. It alienates all protagonists in the debate and satisfies no one.

Supplied by courtesy of Brendan May, Chief Executive, MSC