From good intentions to unexpected results - a cross-scale analysis of a fishery improvement project within the Indonesian blue swimming crab.

Private actors have become prominent players in the work to drive social and environmental sustainability transitions. In the fisheries sector, fishery improvement projects (FIPs) aim to address environmental challenges by leveraging the capacity of industry actors and using value chains to incentivize change. Despite globally rising FIP numbers, the incentive structures behind FIP establishment and the role of internal dynamics remain poorly understood. This paper uses institutional entrepreneurship as an analytical lens to examine the institutional change surrounding the management and trade of the Indonesian blue swimming crab and sheds light on how global market dynamics, local fishery dynamics, and value chain initiatives interact to affect the trajectory towards sustainability over time. We contribute to the institutional entrepreneurship framework by extending it with social-ecological dynamics, different actors' ability to realize or resist change, and outcomes of institutional change. These additions can improve its explanatory power in relation to sustainability initiatives in fisheries governance and beyond. Our cross-scale historical analysis of the value chain shows not only the entrepreneurship behind the FIP's establishment, and its institutional interventions, but also why these have been unsuccessful in improving the ecological sustainability of fishers' and traders' behavior. This provides valuable empirical grounding to a wider debate about industry leadership and private incentives for sustainability at large and helps disentangle under what conditions such initiatives are more (or less) likely to have intended effects. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40152-022-00285-y.

Fishery Improvement Projects as a governance tool for fisheries sustainability: A global comparative analysis.

Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs) are a form of private governance using seafood supply chains to reduce environmental impacts of fishing in some of the most challenged fisheries. Some FIPs are industry-led, others are championed by NGOs. They range across many different fishery types, in both high- and low-income settings. Their diversity is notable, and their proliferation remarkable. This rapid growth suggests FIPs are becoming a key feature of the fisheries governance landscape globally. Based on a global sample of 107 FIPs, we systematically examined their reported actions, the actors involved, and their achievements in terms of policy and practice outputs. The most common actions were dialogues with policy stakeholders, data collection, and educational efforts directed at fishers. Common policy outputs included development of management plans and/or a management body, and rules for limiting entry and increasing compliance. Practice related outputs were dominated by gear changes, and observer and traceability programs. Only crab and lobster FIPs engaged in sustained policy conversations as one of the most common actions. Shrimp and tuna fisheries report more engagement in testing and implementing changes to fishery practices. While supply chain actors are involved in all FIPs, retailers and 1st tier suppliers are relatively absent from FIP activities, and are primarily involved in rallying financial support or some policy engagement. Based on our analysis we discuss the opportunities and challenges FIPs will likely need to engage with to contribute to a global transition to more socially and environmentally sustainable fisheries. We outline key areas where further work is needed to understand how FIPs can improve their contribution to global fisheries governance in the future.

What does popular media have to tell us about the future of seafood?

We examined ∼300 newspaper and business-oriented articles published over a 10-year period to assess trends in how seafood "sustainability" is talked about. We mapped key concepts relating to seafood sustainability as the word was used. We asked if the reports provided evidence that perceptions of problems or solutions for sustainability in seafood have changed over time. What were emergent areas of interest, and what concepts relevant to sustainable fisheries and seafood were absent in the reports? The number of reports concerning sustainability that focused on the middle of the supply chain (e.g., primary processors and importers) increased over time; certification was cited as both part of sustainability problems and a solution. We observed very little change over time in the kinds of fishery and seafood problems reported in the media sampled; themes consistently focused on environmental aspects of fisheries (social wellbeing aspects did not appear in the sample as linked with the term "sustainability"); and very few media reports on sustainable seafood cited aquaculture as a solution. We discuss the gap between what many researchers may perceive as the state-of-the-art of ideas and communication in seafood sustainability, and what appeared empirically in media during the period under study.