The best environmental choice in seafood

1. Disclaimer If any interpretive issues arise in relation to the issues covered in these presentations, the text of the MSC Scheme Documents will prevail in all instances. The MSC is not responsible for any issues arising to any parties as a result of consulting these presentations. If you are unsure of any details on any of the subjects covered, please consult the relevant MSC scheme documents or contact the MSC at standards@msc.org. MSC Executive October 2010 The best environmental choice in seafood

2. Traditional and informal approaches in assessments

3. Learning Objectives • To understand the characteristics and purpose of informal and traditional approaches • To know what the Certification Requirements & Guidance say about these approaches • To understand how the fishery assessment process is affected

4. Agenda • Characteristics • Purpose • Requirements & Guidance • Examples • Evaluation Tools

5. Informal and traditional management approaches: Characteristics • Often undocumented • Less easy to discern • Practices often linked to social, economic and cultural factors • On a case by case basis can achieve intent of MSC performance indicators

6. Purpose of additional guidance • Need for size, scale and type of fishery to be taken into consideration in assessments. • Recognition of the “function” rather than the form of management when fisheries are scored.

7. Requirements and guidance on traditional and informal approaches • Elaborates on requirement to take scale and intensity into consideration • Definition of terms (Implicit/explicit) • Guidance for Principle 3 Performance indicators and PI 1.2.1 and 1.2.2

8. Requirements: Factors to consider when scoring from “implicit” to “explicit” Understanding of the approach across the fishery Application across the fishery Durability Effectiveness Unambiguity 100

9. Guidance: What does it say? • Examples of how different informal and traditional approaches may be meeting intended outcomes in Principle 3 performance indicators • Examples of methods to evaluate less discernable management measures

10. Guidance: Governance and policy examples • Legal and customary framework • Use of semi-structured interviews to determine how customs, traditions, norms, social mechanisms, values, internal statutes combine to achieve sustainable fisheries • Demonstration of presence of local dispute resolution mechanisms using visual charts • Fisher interviews to determine awareness of established rights • Consultation, roles and responsibility • Use of institutional maps to demonstrate how ad-hoc committees, village councils, NGO’s , informal structures function and relate to each other. • Informal gatherings, posters, radio announcements, etc as evidence of consultation • Long term objectives • Consideration of internal factors influencing recent decisions • Incentives • Peer pressure, rights of exclusion, social beliefs as incentives for “good behaviour”

11. Guidance: Fishery specific management examples • Objectives • Qualitative objectives; Factors underpinning recent decisions, reference directions, Understanding of risks posed by social and economic considerations • Incentives • Peer pressure; Territorial Use Rights • Decision making • Case studies • Monitoring Control and Surveillance • Social disapproval, community wardens, exclusivity of access, accessibility to resource, market preferences, naming and shaming practices as disincentives for illegal fishing practices

12. Performance Indicators 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 • Harvest strategy (1.2.1) • RBF infers “risk” related triggers • Evaluation should consider how elements of the strategy combine to keep “susceptibility” at or below acceptable risk level, given productivity of the species. • Harvest control rules (1.2.2) • Spatial, temporal or technical measures to reduce “susceptibility” when qualitative or semi-quantitative objectives are not being achieved.

13. Evaluating informal and traditional approaches • Participatory tools • Semi-structured interviews • Visual charts • Institutional maps • Validation • Cross checking opinions • Combination of methods of collection of information • Wide section of stakeholders

14. Questions & Answers Questions?