The International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF) has released a new five-year strategic plan – covering the years 2020 to 2025 – that has identified five strategic pillars to continue the organization’s mission of improving the sustainability of small-scale, one-by-one fishers.
An officially registered charity since 2012, the IPNLF promotes the sustainability of small-scale fisheries worldwide that use pole-and-line fishing, mainly focusing on the tuna industry. The new strategic plan – and IPNLF’s core activities – are aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, and one of the overarching goals of the new plan is to have 75 percent of IPNLF member supply fisheries directly engaged with supply chain improvements by 2025.
“In response to these challenges, our new strategic plan will continue to help drive the sustainable management of the world’s one-by-one tuna fisheries, and focus on cultivating an increased understanding amongst the seafood industry and wider public regarding the socially responsible and environmentally sustainable sourcing credentials of these fisheries,” IPNLF said in a release.
The new plan’s five key pillars are fisheries support, business development, marketing, and communications, financial management, and good governance.
As part of the overall strategy, IPNLF identified some new initiatives that the organization is working on, which lend themselves to the five pillars of its strategic plan.
One of those initiatives is a new “Sourcing Transparency Platform,” intended to “address the issue of lack, or in some cases, the perceived lack of data in small-scale fisheries.” The new platform “will provide our members with an opportunity to showcase the environmental, sustainability, and social responsibility in their own supply chains, while safeguarding data and privacy requirements.”
IPNLF also stated that an important aspect of the strategic plan is to expand the audience of the organization through marketing and communication strategies.
“At a time when consumers – in particular Millennials and Generation Z – are increasingly using their purchasing power as a channel for change and being a force for good, one-by-one tuna fisheries are ideally positioned to demonstrate both the environmental and social benefits that they bring,” the report states. “Consumer education is aligned with one of our charitable objectives, which is aimed at educating the public on issues related to sustainable development, with a particular focus on the protection, enhancement, and rehabilitation of coastal and marine environments.”
The new plan was established just before the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the organization said. The impacts of the pandemic, it said, are still not fully known, and the IPNLF acknowledged that the initial goals of the strategic plan may have to shift depending on how the pandemic impacts the fisheries it represents.
“While the global impacts of COVID-19 are still unfolding it is difficult to fully comprehend how the pandemic might impact IPNLF’s work,” the strategic plan states. The plan, and organization, go on to state that it will “watch closely how the world evolves as we cannot fully understand nor foresee the all the impacts of COVID-19 will have on the small-scale fisheries we work with.”
Photo courtesy of the International Pole and Line Foundation
