NGO stakeholders are increasingly opting out of eco-certifications because their input disappears into the schemes’ “black box” of decision-making.
Many seafood eco-certifications gain credibility due to the engagement opportunities they provide for stakeholders. Civil society organizations, alongside industry stakeholders, often play central roles in standard development and governance of eco-certifications. More often than not it is environmental and social justice non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provide invaluable expertise and local knowledge by way of input to a fishery or farm certification. For example, that “certified sustainable” tuna in your pantry likely had an NGO help establish the sustainability criteria it met or, perhaps, register objections to its certification.
In fact, stakeholder consultation is a fundamental component of any legitimate eco-label according to the frameworks that a number of seafood eco-certifications adhere to, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO) eco-labelling guidelines and the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling (ISEAL) codes of practice.
Yet, despite these guidelines and codes, there is growing discontent by many NGO stakeholders who report fatigue, frustration and disillusionment with seafood eco-certifications. A number of NGO stakeholders have withdrawn or decreased their engagement with certifications citing little benefit to continuing their efforts. Some groups, including SeaChoice, have even initiated public campaigns in response, at least in part, to certain certification schemes’ inability to effectively address stakeholder concerns. The international Make Stewardship Count campaign is a good example.
In light of these challenges, SeaChoice conducted an NGO stakeholder workshop during the 2019 Seafood Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, as well as an online survey, to explore stakeholder sentiment about participating in eco-certification processes, including any challenges and barriers, as well as what improvements scheme holders could make to help ensure meaningful stakeholder engagement.
Read the full report here.
Report Highlights
Participants reported that eco-certification stakeholder processes were often not user-friendly, requiring the need to “speak their language” (i.e., either referring to technical jargon or to documentation that is literally not available in their language) and that local and cultural contexts can be missed by auditors and certification processes.
We heard that where stakeholders were able to engage in the process, stakeholders commonly experienced frustrations with the lack of accountability and transparency on how decisions are made. That is, stakeholder comments often appear to go into a “black box” of decision-making, and when the outcome is announced there is no rationale or explanation as to how input was considered, or not. Where responses were provided, stakeholders typically felt that they were not meaningful as they rarely adequately addressed stakeholder concerns.
We also heard stakeholders express a general sentiment that stakeholder disillusionment is not taken seriously enough. In many cases, negative stakeholder feedback was met with hostile responses by eco-certification schemes rather than serious engagement. This further eroded stakeholder trust and interest in program participation.
Evidence suggests that stakeholder engagement can lead to higher quality decision-making and outputs. However, this is strongly reliant on the quality of the processes that lead to decision-making and other outputs. Done poorly, such processes can cause stakeholders to become cynical, harbour distrust and withdraw from the process. Such cynicism can, in turn, threaten the legitimacy of the decision-making. Based on the stakeholder perspectives represented in our report, we believe there is a cause for concern that seafood certification standard holders should make more efforts to incorporate stakeholders in decision-making, and be more transparent about their processes, in order to maintain legitimacy.
Moreover, there is widespread agreement in the available literature that stakeholder participation hinges on the need for a genuine opportunity to be heard and to influence the decision. Therefore, for engagement to be genuine, certification standard holders should be open to stakeholder influence and ensure outcomes are not predetermined.
Our report has been shared with the major seafood eco-certifications many of which are currently in the midst of important consultation processes (e.g. from MSC and ASC). We urge these schemes to strongly consider implementing the report recommendations as though their credibility and legitimacy depends on it. Because as stakeholder sentiment demonstrates – it does.
