1. The following annotated section headings provide a basis for developing a set of technical guidelines to be used for an international scheme for eco-labelling marine products. It must be emphasized, however, that any guidelines developed at this point in time, in the absence of significant operational experience with eco-labelling in the marine fisheries sector, can only be provisional. The actual guidelines developed will depend on the context and scope of the envisaged certification scheme, and will need to be modified in light of experience gained in the initial period of application.

2. In developing this document, it was assumed that governments wish to insure that any international eco-labelling scheme developed is transparent, and achieves its main goal of ensuring sustainable fisheries, without penalizing sectors of the global fishing industry which are complying with desirable conservation standards. It is further assumed that an international body will be charged as repository of such certification standards, and that it will carry out its activities in a transparent fashion. This body will provide a forum to review the application of such standards in a fair and uniform fashion, while taking into account the different modalities of individual fisheries. It will also be responsible for application of the set of guidelines finally developed, and provide a forum for revision of the guidelines in the light of experience.

3. Consumers, the stakeholders in the fishery, the market and the private sector, will all play a key role in any eco-labelling scheme. However, it is assumed that organizations or arrangements will be set up nationally or regionally to apply such standards in as uniform manner as possible, taking into account differences in the fisheries themselves, and their management in different countries. As such, the guidelines developed here should remain generic, but eventually, specific interpretations of these may be needed for specific categories of fisheries, such as for example, artisanal fisheries on inshore resources, fisheries on straddling stocks, etc. It is assumed that the actual certification of a resource harvest will in part be implemented within the private sector by inspectors using technical guidelines such as those outlined in draft form below.

4. The question appears to remain unresolved in earlier applications of eco-certification as to what is the entity being certified; the fishery, the resource or the fishing fleet(s)? In the case of marine fisheries, recent international agreements have all spoken of the unit stock or population as the focus for agreements. It is suggested here that the ideal situation would therefore be to certify that the unit resource was being harvested in a sustainable fashion.

5. As noted later, if the resource being exploited was fished by a single fleet, this would mean, by implication, that any fleet harvesting it could also be eligible for certification if other technical criteria discussed later are met. In the case of a stock or unit resource exploited in two or more jurisdictions, or by two or more separate fleets, however, it is not easy to see how one fleet could be certified as behaving in a ecologically-sustainable fashion, if the actions of other fleets were not also in accord with ecological principles, since the net effect of all fleet actions risks driving the resource into an undesirable state.

6. This example appears to illustrate that it is maintaining a sustainable state of the resource which is the main objective of eco-certification, and that in accord with resource assessment principles, it is the resource unit that is to be defined and certified. There may be occasions where the resource could be multispecies in nature, if an appropriate harvesting strategy can be devised which avoids the disappearance of one or more components from the commercial catch.

Effective fisheries management is a precondition for eco-certification¹ of marine fisheries

7. This section will summarize the tools available to national fisheries managers in addressing the problems of access, overcapacity and biological continuity of resources (*). It will be stressed that an eco-labelling scheme will not be foolproof in situations where the resource harvest is not sustainable, where the unit resource being exploited is not defined, or where exclusive resource access rights are not defined, and/or participation in its harvesting is not de facto limited. The existence of allocation / access schemes agreed upon by the large majority of harvesters is also highly desirable. Because the eco-labelling mechanism should be based on internationally agreed principles, the technical guidelines for fisheries management of the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF)² and other internationally agreed instruments, should provide guidance as to the contents of this section.

8. This section will discuss the factors which influence the attitudes of consumers to sustainability of marine fisheries and associated ecosystems, and how these currently, or in the future, are likely to affect the purchases they make on the open market. It will provide guidance on the informational requirements of consumers to make rational product choices and on the desirable features of eco-labelling schemes to ensure that consumers are not misled or confused about the objectives and performance of such schemes. In developing this section, relevant experiences from eco-labelling schemes applied to other types of products such as from forestry will be taken into account as well as the relevant results of the work of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

9. Both eco-labelling schemes and CCRF have as ultimate goals the sustainability of fisheries, and there is obviously a need to keep the schemes compatible with CCRF. At the same time the CCRF places emphasis on achieving this goal by public policy interventions, while an eco-labelling scheme recognizes, de facto, that citizens may exercise their preferences by behaving as consumers in a way compatible with their ethical or moral standpoint on conservation issues. Since a sizable proportion of fish captured for human consumption now enter international trade, the originating government is not in a position to directly influence consumer behaviour in other countries. As a result, the effectiveness of any eco-labelling scheme, whether set up by governments or by the private sector, will be judged by the individual consumer. The consumer will be less impressed by the fishery management provisions governing a fishery, than by evidence of stock collapse, and by evaluation of the state of the resource as determined by independent experts.

10. CCRF provides the means of judging the approach to, and potential effectiveness of fishery management, in terms of the existence of adequate legislation, regulations and their implementation. It also suggests some criteria for judging the effectiveness of these measures in terms of the state of the resource or resources, but separate technical monitoring and review will also be required. Under this section, it may be decided to develop a questionnaire based on CCRF, which will include all the above aspects, but also will examine some of the incidental aspects of the fishery. These may include, inter alia, the effects of the fishery on the marine ecosystem by impacts on incidentally caught and protected species and habitats, by producing waste, or by exerting indirect undesirable effects on the environment, or in deleteriously affecting social groups with long-standing rights or a high degree of dependence on the resources and environment exploited.

11. Both the UN Fish Stocks Agreement³ and CCRF refer to the maximum sustainable yield as a minimum standard or criterion for harvesting that should not be exceeded by a fishery, and this implies its use as a limit reference point (LRP) as described in these two international instruments and in the Technical Guidelines of CCRF on Fisheries Management. This does not preclude the use of other limit reference points based on other types of information, and a considerable literature is developing on this subject, with several regional fishery bodies having recently decided on precautionary reference points. These mark the onset of conditions where the spawning stock is threatened, and the onset of other conditions where stock replacement cannot be guaranteed. These LRPs, and associated criteria and rules that may have been developed, should also make provision for evaluating the impact of environmental change on the state of the resource. The body of experience gained in this area should be used to develop parallel sets of criteria that each meet the requirement of sustainability, and apply to the range of fisheries for which eco-certification is likely to be sought. Multispecies fisheries in particular will pose particular challenges for establishing a viable eco-certification scheme for some fisheries. This section of the guidelines may require further development in a working group of experts on this topic.

12. All eco-labelling schemes require that the product retain its identity from harvest to consumer, and that it is fully traceable throughout the distribution and marketing chain. This presents particular difficulties in marine fisheries, where fleets are often away from port for considerable periods, may fish different unit resources in one trip, and may transship and/or transform products at sea. These may be destined for onshipment to markets in other jurisdictions, or many products may be prepared at sea from one or more stocks and destined for different markets, or different products combined in a single �seafood� pack for direct marketing.

13. Demonstrating in a foolproof way the feasibility of maintaining the identity of the product from capture to market is the responsibility of the harvester applying for eco-certification. The guidelines will however provide some technical suggestions for achieving this precondition, which will probably require development of technologies and criteria that are flexible and adaptable to different fishery modalities.

14. Certifying that the chain of supply is intact might require that inspectors be present at key points in the capture and distribution chain so that the international trade in the classified product can be controlled. The training of these inspectors in a standardized fashion will probably be accomplished nationally, but training material and instructors may be approved by the international arrangement envisaged in the Preamble.

15. Responding early on to the question of whether certification should be done for the process and/or the result is fundamental to a successful approach, and one that will make eco-certification potentially available to both artisanal and industrial scale fisheries. A certification that depends mainly on the adoption of proper procedures and institutions as spelled out in the CCRF and its Technical Guidelines, will be easier for developed country fisheries to adhere to, but as recent history indicates, will not necessarily result in resource conservation. On the other hand, certifying the harvesting regime a resource is subject to as sustainable has to be based on objective data on the state of resources and their anticipated response to changes in fishing. It is essential to demonstrate that the one or more fisheries on it pose a low risk to continuity of the resources harvested. This may be easier to achieve for some small-scale fisheries where ownership is specified but management procedures are less formal. A proper mix of these two types of information seems necessary for certification, and should be spelled out in this section.

On the one hand, data gathering, control and surveillance of the fishery needs to be effective. On the other hand, the state of the resource and its continuity needs to be effectively monitored, and precautionary measures built in to the management system to act quickly should this be threatened. In this connection, lower rates of harvesting are sustainable for slow-growing and long-lived species, than for fast-growing and short-lived species. Where they occur together in a mixed species fishery, special measures will be required to avoid disappearance of the former.

16. In �certifying the result� we are discussing the viability or otherwise of the resources being harvested, in terms that by definition are usually quantitative or at least semi-quantitative. For example, how large is the parental population now in relation to its size prior to exploitation? How many juveniles are recruiting annually to the population compared with earlier? What is the size of the spawning/nursery habitat in relation to that under pristine conditions? This approach underlies much quantitative fisheries evaluation or stock assessment, and it is assumed that some aspect of the population is measurable, such that quantitative criteria can be applied in judging it. These criteria may be quantitative or semi-quantitative, but the use of accepted indices or verifiable anecdotal information is not excluded.

17. In �certifying the process�, typically, a questionnaire might establish in a qualitative or semi-quantitative manner, whether or not appropriate management steps are being taken, and if an effective management process is being maintained. Many of the provisions of CCRF fall into this category, and a questionnaire based largely on this approach and on the management aspects of CCRF has been produced, which can be used to evaluate a fishery from answers to a series of such questions⁴.

18. Any certification of a resource and its accompanying fisheries must clearly state which resources are exploited or otherwise affected by the fishery as by catch, discards or via habitat or trophic impacts, in order to ensure that all relevant considerations are taken into account. Indicators may be specified which monitor the reproductive capacity, recruitment to the stock and other relevant life history parameters. These prerequirements might be achieved through a document specifying potential impacts of the fishery, the jurisdictions and fleets harvesting it, the resource extent, migrations and ecological requirements. The criteria used for assessing the status of a fish stock will have to be sufficiently flexible in order to encompass a wide range of situations and types of information. Fish stock assessment provides a number of tools and mechanisms for establishing the state of exploitation of a resource. Some of these are mathematically complex and calculate the state of the resource based on commercial landing statistics and fishing power of fleets and their operations. Others may depend on direct monitoring of fish abundance by surveys on the fishing ground. Even in the absence of a formal assessment, if data are available, indices of stock health may be calculated that show the current condition of the resource in relation to previous periods when it was exploited at safe levels. In all cases, at least the following types of information need to be collected as a basis for a species-specific eco-certification:

1. Some index of biomass of the stock in relation to an earlier period when the resource was exploited less heavily than now, or some indication of the mortality rate caused by the fishery in relation to that due to natural causes.
2. An indication that reproduction is successful and that parental stock size is sufficient to replace current stock size.
3. An indication that the environment and habitat remains unaffected by natural and/or human causes in its ability to support fish populations at former levels.

19. Given that there are likely to be a wide range of opinions on the quantitative measures to satisfy these questions, the guidelines may cover the setting up of review panels for overseeing certification schemes, their technical criteria and application. Alternatively, and in addition, the Internet may be used to display publicly the supporting information on the basis of which the certifications sought and obtained, and the received information inputs from all interested parties which can be followed up by further investigation where this seems merited.

20. This section of the guidelines will suggest minima for the technical information needed to satisfy considerations 1 to 3 of paragraph 15 above, for the main types of fisheries where it is envisaged there is likely to be an application for eco-certification. The first task here therefore, will be to arrive at realistic categories of fisheries and make judgements as to the type of criteria and relative feasibility of application, of an eco-certification scheme in each case. It is desirable, to the extent possible, that minimum requirements be phrased in the form of a series of LRPs which specify ecologically safe conditions, and form objective criteria against which the performance of the fishery can be judged.

21. Following CCRF and the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, recent work has addressed the application of the precautionary approach to the fisheries assessment and management cycle. One tool that has received widespread approval for this purpose has been the use of LRPs. These are technical benchmarks agreed by stakeholders as signaling when the stock and its management are about to enter a dangerous area where continued viability, and stock replacement, may be compromised. These LRPs can be regarded as numerical versions of development indicators. Supplementary approaches have been proposed which use semi-quantitative measures of safe or precautionary management, and these can be based, for example, on questionnaires. This may be particularly appropriate where quantitative data do not allow calculation of the sophisticated LRP�s used where historical series of age structure data are available, as in North Atlantic fisheries.

22. Harvesting strategies show wide variation, and may themselves be based on the year-to-year control of fishing effort or catch of one or more fleets with specified components. At the other extreme, individual or communal fishing rights may be granted, or predefined fishing areas or even leases may be specified.

23. In addition to the various management modalities, access to the fishery may be local, national, or multi-nation fleets may be operating on a shared, straddling stock or highly migratory resource, each perhaps operating inside different jurisdictions.

24. It is essential that whatever the situation, that all, or the large majority, of harvesting sectors for a given resource have agreed to set up an arrangement or mechanism for joint resource evaluation, management consultation, and have agreed to fully participate in its activities. Also highly desirable are agreements on allocations, and on limits to vessel size or replacement. Such arrangements should be effective for the control of fishing effort/mortality on the resource in question, and/or the control of the relevant fleet capacity. There should also be provisions for protection of the habitat/environment of the resource.

25. Some of the difficulties of applying eco-labelling schemes to marine fish products will be outlined including questions of ownership, shared access and responsibility, both of national fleets, and situations where resources are straddling, highly migratory or shared between two or more jurisdictions. One particular difficulty here will relate to discards: will it be possible, for example, to certify a shrimp fishery which discards 80 percent of the fish in the catch, or a drift net fishery which kills incidentally large numbers of marine mammals?

26. This section will consider what arrangements will have to be made in the case of resources shared by fleets from different jurisdictions, taking into account existing arrangements such as fisheries commissions, bilateral fishery arrangements, joint marketing companies, etc.

27. This section will also attempt to spell out for each the main fishery modalities, what are the minimum management standards applicable. In all cases, transparency will be needed, and in any case, will be essential for the fish or fish product to be followed up through the chain from capture to marketing. The provision of an independent review of procedures should also be allowed for.

28. In this section there will be a discussion of how to define the unit fishery or resource that is to be certified. Evidently, whether it is the unit resource or the unit fishery for which eco-certification is to be sought, this will need to be defined. It is noted that unit fish stocks are the accepted �building blocks� for fisheries management world wide, and are specified as such in all recent international instruments on marine fisheries from the Law of the Sea Convention to the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and CCRF. At the same time, there are significant differences of opinion about what constitutes a �stock�, with opinions varying from an �isolated interbreeding population unit� or �genetic stock� in the Darwinian sense, to a �fishery stock� following the more pragmatic usage of the term stock as a separate, fishable group of adult fish.

29. The �fishery stock� seems to be the appropriate one here, provisionally defined as: �locally accessible fish resources in which fishing pressure on these resource has no effect on the abundance of fish in another contiguous resource, and vice versa�. Some exchange of individuals between different �stock areas� obviously occurs by diffusion, but low rates of exchange are reported to not materially affect the assumption that adjacent stock units react independently to different local fishing pressures.

30. Whether the �stock� can be considered as made up of the several species exploited together will depend to some extent on the ranges of the species considered. In principle however, the �fishery stock� can be extended to include a multispecies resource, and ideally, it will be possible to distinguish individual �fisheries� in a way such that their extent coincides with an individual �stock area�. At the same time, eco-certification must recognize that a significant number of marine resources fall into the category of �transboundary� resources; either as shared, straddling or highly migratory species in the sense used in the above international instruments. An application for eco-certification on the part of fleets from one jurisdiction without corresponding good management of those components of the �fishery stock� that are exchanging individual fish with an adjacent jurisdiction where no management control is being applied, would find difficulties in demonstrating that the whole �fishery stock� would remain intact without appropriate and parallel action being taken in the other jurisdiction.

31. In the context of �multispecies stocks�, this section will also discuss questions of by-catch and discards of unwanted biota, and will need to deal with criteria for determining the impact of the fishery on incidentally caught and/or protected species.

32. There are obviously immediate practical implications of a decision to certify � unit stocks�, however defined, as opposed to fleets, fishing grounds or fisheries, but there seem few alternatives available if the certifiers are to use existing fisheries resource information for certification. A decision to base eco-certification on �fishable stocks� of course means that marine fisheries immediately diverges from eco-certification of forest products. This is true in terms of the ownership of marine resources which are vested mostly in governments as opposed to private woodlot owners who can apply for certification; (although increasingly exclusive user rights are being granted such as community based management schemes, or individual transferable quotas). This is also true because of the migratory nature of fishery resources which do not respect international boundaries. Many stocks are shared by two or more countries, and as noted, hence �certifying the result� in the case of a national fleet applying for certification, would depend not only on the actions just of that fleet, but also on that of all others exploiting the same stock.

33. In theory, all countries exploiting a stock should make a joint application once they have agreed on a common �safe exploitation� regime, but this then raises questions as to the level of the certifying body, which cannot be in the private sector unless this itself is certified by an international body. It may be simpler initially therefore, to gain experience by certifying stocks exclusively within national waters, before tackling the more difficult questions posed by straddling stocks.

34. Certification will not be simply a matter of providing a simple once-and-for-all decision between certified or �green� fisheries and those �red� fisheries that do not currently meet standards. In real time, a fishery may move from a �red� or uncertifiable state through an �orange� or uncertain condition where most but not all necessary criteria laid down by the certification authority are satisfied, to eventually attain a �green� or certified status as management measures are tightened to ensure sustainability. This �traffic light� analogy reflects the requirement that a fishery be monitored continuously, but also shows that a specified periodicity of inspection needs to be agreed upon, such that every three years or so, the certification needs to be confirmed by reference to updated information.

35. As noted above, fisheries which are certified in one review period may fail to meet the same criteria in the next. Implicit here is a time sequence of checks whereby a previous categorization may be reversed in the next review period. A suitable time period may be three years, but provisions will need to be made so that catastrophic changes that may occur in the interim requiring decertification, can be adequately responded to. As noted in CCRF, the effects of overfishing and of unfavourable environmental change in leading to dangerous stock decline will both require the same management responses to be made. This implies that the certifying authority should be well informed about major changes in relevant environmental variables as well as landings.

36. The two above processes must both be in play in an eco-certification procedure, and may require slightly different criteria or population levels of resources to be defined. Otherwise the fishery will tend to oscillate from classification to declassification with small changes in population size, and there will be little incentive to allow �depleted resources� to reach full recovery, however this is defined. To be sure that a stock has shown a �recovery� following a previous decertification, the criteria for certifying a fishery should be set at a somewhat higher population biomass or breeding population than that which result in decertification. The use of supplementary information on the level of annual recruitment may provide some indication of future population trends however.

37. This section will look at two main considerations:

1. Compatibility of parties making a joint application for eco-certification of a common resource: In cases where the resource to be certified migrates across two or more juridictions, or the exclusive access areas of two or more fleets, the legal and regulatory frameworks, fishing methods and approaches to assessment and management of the two or more parties concerned, as they affect the resource in question, will need to be made compatible and transparent.
2. An international arrangement for eco-certification: In the introduction to this document it was assumed that an international body will be set up or selected among existing bodies having similar functions. This body should interpret the standards, train certifying officers, confirm that certifications meet with established standards, and provide a location where the certifications and supporting data required for certification, will be publicly available. This body itself will not be primarily concerned with certifying fisheries, but its activities and the certifications that it agrees to will be under review by a steering committee whose composition and representation will need to be agreed on by negotiation. The certification process itself will require establishment of independent professional bodies, perhaps within each country, and the training of their staff. The international body will provide written material and standards for certification, and specify training requirements of certifying officers and review their activities.