The premium prices consumers pay for sustainable seafood sourced from small-scale fisheries rarely trickles down to those making the catch, according to a new study from Conservation International (CI).
For the study, titled “Who benefits from sustainable seafood? Examining equity across voluntary sustainability standards in small-scale fisheries,” CI researchers interviewed fishers enrolled in eco-label and fishery improvement projects (FIPs) landing skipjack tuna in the Maldives, blue swimming crab in India, and yellowfin tuna in Indonesia, finding that most of the value gained from these premium offerings tends to remain with retailers, distributors, and exporters.
“Across all three cases, we find that most retail value accrues to downstream actors (importers, retailers, distributors), with fishers receiving between 4 percent and 22 percent of retail price. This asymmetry is structural, in that buyers do not currently face requirements to disclose sourcing commitments, price data, or profit margins, while upstream actors often bear the costs of certification, monitoring, and the compounding burdens of climate change on resource distribution,” the study said.
On top of that, the researchers found through most existing literature on profit distribution in seafood supply chains, the fishers are seeing the lowest gross and operating profit margins, "in many cases due to being captive to buyers/traders and/or lacking market information or an organized voice that forces them to be price-takers rather than price-setters."
CI Program Manager for Seafood Markets and Equity Shreya Yadav, who served as the study’s lead author, noted it was difficult for the researchers to “find much evidence of a measurable change for fishers” participating in these voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) – a category that includes certifications, ratings, and improvement projects.
“In fact, our interviews and workshops revealed that fishers and fishing communities are often not even aware they're part of these programs,” Yadav said in a news post about the research on CI’s website.
“Structural conditions like debt, poverty, and climate change operate as another layer of challenges to fishers that VSS have no clear mechanisms to address, yet which fundamentally determine whether producer communities are able to benefit from these programs,” the researchers added.
The study calls for the establishment of more equitable pathways “taken within and beyond current VSS frameworks” to help combat some of these systemic challenges complicating the relationship between fishers and their buyer and processor partners.
“If you don't pay attention to the social inequities fishers face, you're never going to reach your environmental sustainability goals,” CI Coastal Community Fisheries Director Elena Finkbeiner, who co-authored the study, said. “You can’t expect somebody to commit to sustainable fishing in the long term if they’re not earning enough to live.”
CI researchers said organizations setting VSS criteria should start tracking equity as an outcome, highlighting Fair Trade (FT) as a certifier making inroads in this area.
“Our research also highlights how some models that have some participatory approaches built into their frameworks result in higher awareness and better procedural and distributional equity outcomes than other VSS,” the study said. “Fisher awareness of FT was high in the Maldives (82 percent) compared to awareness of MSC [Marine Stewardship Council] in the same place (6 percent). However, in Indonesia, where local organizations have prioritized fisher participation, awareness for both MSC and FT was high, suggesting that there are elements of MSC that may be modified to be more inclusive. This does not mean FT is without limitations: Women still largely remain excluded from all VSS governance across cases, indicating that more explicit mechanisms are needed to better include post-harvest actors, roles traditionally filled by women.”
Collaboration with local organizations also plays a big part in “helping producer communities meaningfully engage in VSS processes,” according to the researchers, who spotlighted the work of associations like Asosiasi Perikanan Pole & Line dan Handline Indonesia (AP2HI) and Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia (MDPI).
“The sustained investment of AP2HI and MDPI in Maluku’s fisheries – conducting catch quality trainings, supporting women processors, and providing a bridge between industry and communities – has created conditions for VSS to function more effectively. Workshop participants in Maluku emphasized the sustained investment of these organizations in building local capacity, developing trusted relationships, and eventually elevating fisher voices in these spaces,” the study said. “This on-the-ground impact is consistent with our value alignment analysis, which showed that Indonesia’s supply chain actors had the strongest organizational alignment on equity – suggesting that the values and practices of organizations operating in a place matter for whether and how VSS can deliver equitable outcomes.”
The study said it will ultimately take a village of sustainability stakeholders all along the supply chain enacting “coordinated change at multiple levels” to move the needle on enhancing equity outcomes for fishers..
“Certification bodies, including FIPs, need to embed participatory processes into their initiatives,” it said. “Funders need to actively invest in local institutions and capacity analogous to MDPI and AP2HI. Market actors need to commit to pricing transparency and tracking economic progress, for instance through living income benchmarks. State actors need to address the structural and contextual conditions that set the enabling conditions for VSS success.”
