The Need for Broader Incentive to Fulfill Fishery Social Standards Requirements in Small Scale Fisheries

The current increase in demand for fisheries social standards needs to be supported to help fishery supply chain meet these standards.

In late March 2023, IPNLF released an article that is relevant to the current state of one-by-one fisheries in Indonesia. The article discusses how can seafood companies meet human rights challenges while ensuring social equity for small-scale fisheries.

This article is particularly relevant as AP2HI and its Indonesian and international partners have been working to meet “fisheries sustainability standards” as well as “social responsibility standards”, however the necessary incentives for fisheries to maintain sustainable operations are still missing.

AP2HI’s efforts to maintain environmental and social responsibility certifications and standards have been particularly challenging. As the cost of managing certification is high yet the product claimed as certified is still very low (only about 5% of the total MSC vessel production, 12,000 tons alone). Currently, the existing support comes from 50 local companies and 5 overseas companies, as well as several other strategic partners.

More than 100,000 USD per year is needed for an industry organization to manage environmental and social certification and standards alone. For this reason, continued support from Seafood Buyers is still very much needed.

Despite this unbalanced situation, AP2HI and its partners continue to raise stakeholders’ awareness of the need to incentivize Indonesian one-by-one fisheries actors to support sustainable fisheries operations, while preventing the “tragedy of the commons” and ensuring “no one is left behind”