Framework assessment of sustainability: Methodology for evaluating the conformance of fishery and aquaculture management systems to FAO guidelines

Sustainability is about meeting the needs of current generations without compromising those of future generations. For fished and aquacultured products, sustainability is often gauged on an individual fishery or farm basis but can be driven by a well-designed and implemented regulatory management system, or set of laws, rules, and policies promulgated by a governmental entity. To achieve global coverage via current assessment approaches requires enormous effort and resources due to the sheer number of individual operating units. System assessments are well established in assuring seafood safety, but much less so in regard to sustainability. This paper presents a tool to measure sustainability based on the prevailing regulatory management system and invites other researchers and practitioners to gauge the applicability of the methodology to new contexts. Evaluating how management systems support sustainable practices is key for assessing current reality and planning change. The methodology presented is based on international criteria for sustainability set forth in United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) guidelines for the ecolabelling of fish and fishery products as well as aquaculture certification. The assessment tools are the distillation of qualitative criteria found within the FAO guidelines into simple propositions called “Topics of Pertinence” that enable a straightforward cross-checking of whether the requirements and provisions of regulatory management systems reflect broadly accepted sustainability criteria in fisheries and aquaculture sectors. Assessments document what management systems aim to do via laws, regulations, and policies, and verify mechanisms within the systems that support implementation and compliance. While other sustainability assessments exist, the methodology described here is unique in that it is the only process that provides a system-based approach targeting higher management levels, which can increase global coverage of sustainability assessment from the current lower-tiered approach of certifying at individual production entities.