Using Fisheries Certification to Support Access Laws

It’s hardly surprising that governments in industrial countries are slow to make rules regarding sustainable development if doing so may affect the bottom line of influential corporations. Yet recently there has been a trend among such governments to embrace forest certification, the main objective of which is sustainable management of forest lands and ecosystems. Essentially, governments and the forest industry have been pushed into doing so by consumer demand shaped by environmental campaigns. Certification has a very long history as a mechanism for ensuring high product standards; adapting it to address conservation and fair trade issues is a relatively recent development. In essence, it has become a tool by which concerned citizen groups can both work with government and industry to secure standards consistent with sustainable development and fair treatment – or, if considered strategically necessary, bypass government and industry by targeting markets and creating consumer demand for products that come with an assurance that those high standards have been met.

Now it appears that the stage has been set for the certification movement to expand its horizons to include the use of genetic resources. The Panel of Experts on access and benefit sharing, appointed by the CBD COP, noted a need to consider multilateral mechanisms to promote support for the prior informed consent rights of provider countries and communities. One possibility suggested by the Panel in its first report was the adoption of certification systems with a focus on access and benefit sharing. This is an option that could prove relevant for some aquatic genetic resources, and in fact is already under consideration in the collection of ornamental fish.

Certification most commonly refers to independent, third party verification that an organization complies with a set of standards and principles based on best practices in the field. In the natural resources field, forestry certification has received much attention in recent years. Increasing interest among forest companies in achieving certification, through bodies such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), has largely been driven by consumer demand for timber products from sustainable managed forests and by scepticism about some countries’ government regulations. Forest certification programmes ensure sustainable management by auditing forest companies’ on the ground operations or environmental management systems, or both. In addition to providing certificates showing proof of certification, some programmes also provide product ‘ecolabels’ as an assurance to consumers that a timber product has met objective standards for sustainability throughout the ‘chain of custody’ from forest to store shelf. Generally, certification standards and principles are developed through multi-stakeholder processes to ensure both credibility and widespread support

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