Sustainability Route Maps: A Pathway to Improved Environmental Performance and Certification in Small-Scale Fisheries

Fishery certification is recognized as a viable tool to promote sustainability.  Approximately 10% of the world’s fisheries have achieved MSC certification by demonstrating  they meet stringent standards related to stock sustainability, ecosystem impacts, and management.  Most of these fisheries are large, organized and well-resourced. In contrast, participation by small-scale fisheries in the MSC  programme is low.  Data-deficiency, inadequate management, and governance problems are some of the challenges that prevent small-scale fisheries from becoming certified. To overcome these challenges many small-scale fisheries employ multi-stakeholder, sustainability route maps as a pathway to certification. These involve  conducting an  analysis based on MSC standards and identifying actions and milestones to address gaps that are a barrier to certification. Responsibilities are identified, roles assigned, and partnership commitments secured to implement the route maps. Over time, implementation leads to incremental improvement towards sustainability. MSC has introduced tools to support the process. Benefits reported by small-scale fisheries participating in this process include consolidation/ focus of efforts, ability to attract resources for improvement, engagement of stakeholders in management, improved sustainability, and tangible progress towards certification. In this way, MSC certification remains an achievable goal.   Wider application of this approach will lead to more small-scale fisheries becoming certified.