The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020

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THE STATE OF WORLD FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE 
2020
Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea) 
or informal information-exchange working 
groups (e.g. Network of Exchange of Information 
and Experience among Latin American and 
Caribbean Countries), to combat IUU fishing. 
Finally, negotiations are continuing within the 
WTO for an agreement that would obligate 
States to prohibit subsidies from being given 
(or continuing to be given) to persons involved 
in IUU fishing. However, invoking such a 
prohibition involves a number of prerequisites, 
including agreeing on a set of definitions of 
terms such as “IUU fishing” and the steps or 
criteria for determining the occurrence of IUU 
fishing. Agreeing on these definitions and 
criteria is proving to be a major challenge, but 
there is hope for consensus. 
Product legality and origin
As global demand for fish and fishery products 
has increased significantly in recent years, 
so has awareness of the need to ensure that 
supplies come from operations free of economic, 
environmental and social issues along the 
whole fish value chain. Besides the original 
requirements that seafood traceability was 
established to address, namely food safety, more 
attention has focused on the legality aspect of 
fish and seafood supplies. Concurrently, debate 
on the utility, costs and benefits of sustainability 
certification in fisheries and aquaculture 
has continued, and various improvement 
programmes have stemmed from concerns 
over challenges facing developing-country 
producers in this regard. Another issue linked to 
product legality is food fraud. While not a new 
phenomenon, it has come under the spotlight 
in recent years. Major initiatives are under way 
in many countries, at both governmental and 
private-sector levels, to combat food fraud.
Catch documentation schemes (CDSs) are 
broadly recognized as a useful tool for 
preventing the entry into the value chain of 
fish originating from catches inconsistent 
with applicable measures, with which seafood 
legality is ensured at the entry point. After the 
adoption of the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for 
Catch Documentation Schemes (FAO, 2019b), 
the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission initiated 
the process to develop a new CDS. This will be 
the fourth CDS introduced by an RFMO, after 
those by the Convention on the Conservation of 
Antarctic Marine Living Resources, International 
Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic 
Tunas, and Commission for the Conservation 
of Southern Bluefin Tuna. In the meantime, 
several market-related measures to combat IUU 
fishing have been introduced. These include 
the Catch Certification System of the Republic 
of Korea (targeting three species), the Seafood 
Import Monitoring Program of the United States 
of America, and the CDS of the Association 
of Southeast Asian Nations. Other national 
or regional initiatives are under discussion 
or development. This demonstrates the 
global commitment and consensus to combat 
IUU fishing through multiple approaches. 
Almost a decade after its introduction, the catch 
certification regulation of the European Union 
has evolved into “CATCH”, an electronic CDS 
that is expected to provide a single database with 
real-time monitoring of import controls.
Several recent FAO publications explore the 
roles different national authorities could play 
to ensure the effectiveness of national seafood 
traceability, and eventually to support the 
functionality of CDSs (Hosch, 2018; FAO, 2018c). 
The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability 
(GDST, 2016) is an industry-led international 
platform to develop a unified framework for 
interoperable seafood traceability practices 
based on four pillars: (i) internationally agreed 
key data elements; (ii) technical specifications 
for interoperable traceability systems; 
(iii) internationally agreed benchmarks for 
verifying data validity; and (iv) harmonization 
of business-smart national regulations. 
Another international initiative, the Seafood 
Alliance for Legality and Traceability, seeks 
collaboration and synergy among efforts around 
seafood traceability. 
The debate on sustainability certification has 
focused more on challenges in developing 
regions, such as high costs, low incentives, lack 
of data and poor governance. However, in recent 
years, the numbers and multiplicity of such 
schemes have been confusing. The proliferation 
of rating systems, fishery improvement projects 
and aquaculture improvement projects has 
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PART 2 
SUSTAINABILITY IN ACTION
further complicated the picture. Progress towards 
harmonization is noticeable, as the Global 
Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) has 
successfully recognized nine ecolabels (for 
both wild-caught and farmed seafood) using 
its benchmark tools (GSSI, 2019). There is 
no evidence that sustainability certification 
will be phased out in the near future, also in 
view of consumers’ increasing demand for 
sustainable seafood, and the absence of a better 
alternative. A significant proportion of global 
seafood production is not ready to engage with 
the available sustainability ecolabelling and 
certification schemes. The GSSI Measuring 
and Accelerating Performance Program, 
supported by FAO, is a market-based programme 
targeting seafood producers currently working 
towards or not participating in sustainability 
certification. The programme supports local 
producers in committing to essential incremental 
improvements within specific time frames, 
in conformity with the Code. With market 
incentives for verified sustainability performance 
improvements and a lower barrier to entry, the 
programme has the potential to significantly 
expand the participation of seafood producers in 
the improvement and certification process.
The fisheries and aquaculture sector is highly 
vulnerable to food fraud given the complexity 
of the sector, the price differential between 
lookalike species, and the multiplicity of species 
and their corresponding value chains. Studies in 
the United States of America and the European 
Union have shown the seafood sector to be in the 
top two or three food sectors most vulnerable to 
fraudulent activity. A recent major coordinated 
action by the European Commission, INTERPOL 
and Europol across 11 European countries 
detected fraudulent practices concerning 
tuna fish, including species substitution and 
fraudulently selling tuna intended for canning 
as fresh tuna. More than 51 tonnes of tuna were 
seized and 5 criminal cases initiated. 
In 2018, an FAO report highlighted how 
combating fish fraud is a complex task requiring 
the strengthening of national food regulatory 
programmes, the development of effective, 
science-based traceability systems, and improved 
methods for fish authenticity testing (FAO, 
2018d). It also emphasized the need for the fish 
industry to develop and implement systems for 
fish-fraud vulnerability assessment in order to 
identify potential sources of fish fraud within 
supply chains, and to prioritize control measures 
to minimize the risk of receiving fraudulent or 
adulterated raw materials or ingredients. 
In 2019, the Codex Committee on Food Import 
and Export Certification and Inspection Systems 
established an electronic working group on 
food fraud with a wide-ranging remit to review 
existing Codex texts to determine how to 
progress work in this area. 
Building on these initiatives, FAO held a 
technical workshop on food fraud in Rome in 
November 2019 to aid the development of a 
comprehensive approach to tackling food fraud. 
At the workshop, experts and FAO staff explored 
the multifaceted aspects of food fraud, and 
identified key measures, tools and procedures in 
place to combat food fraud across various value 
chains. Specifically, the purpose of the workshop 
was to agree on key elements that contribute 
to food fraud and to identify the elements, 
institutions and mechanisms that countries need 
to put in place in order to effectively address 
the issue.
Sustainability, tenure, access and user rights
For natural resources such as land, water, forests, 
fisheries and other aquatic resources in lakes, 
rivers, and seas, the term “tenure” generally 
refers to the norms and rules about how people 
govern, access and use these resources. The term 
“user” means the person, group of people, or 
other entities who may be doing these actions. 
Thus, the topic of tenure and user rights is about 
who can use these resources, for how long and 
under what conditions. The governance of tenure 
and user rights describes whether and how 
people are able to clarify, acquire and protect 
rights to use and to manage these resources. 
In marine and inland fisheries, the connection 
between sustainable resource use and 
secure tenure, user and access rights is 
widely recognized. There is also increasing 
acknowledgement that environmental 
sustainability is intrinsically linked to and 
dependent on the social and economic 
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THE STATE OF WORLD FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE 
2020
sustainability of coastal and inland fisheries 
communities in the long term. The livelihoods 
of many, particularly among the rural poor, are 
based on having secure and equitable access to 
and management of fisheries and aquaculture 
resources, as these resources provide shelter 
and highly nutritious food, underpin social, 
cultural and religious practices, and are a central 
factor in equitable economic growth and social 
cohesion. Therefore, ineffective governance of 
tenure and user rights that does not consider 
the need to balance environmental, social and 
economic sustainability constitutes a major 
threat to secure livelihoods and the sustainable 
use of natural resources. Such governance 
often results in extreme poverty and hunger 
for communities that depend on these natural 
resources. Appropriate tenure systems, including 
clear access and user rights, are thus fundamental 
elements of securing sustainable fisheries and 
their contribution to the SDGs.
For centuries, many different tenure systems 
have existed, supporting different combinations 
of implicit and explicit social, management and 
policy objectives, which commonly reflect the 
three pillars of sustainability: ensuring resource 
conservation; contributing to social well-being; 
and generating economic benefits in a context 
of food security and poverty eradication. 
These systems range from community, traditional 
or other groups’ access and use rights, to 
individual transferable quotas or catch shares, 
to preferential zones for particular groups such 
as small-scale fishers. While some systems 
prioritize economic efficiency among recognized 
resource users (such as individuals or groups of 
people), others are inspired by, or bring about 
the formal recognition of, informal or customary 
tenure systems. 
If properly designed, tenure and user rights 
systems can secure the activity of historical 
users and dependent communities, and establish 
exclusive access to the resource and create the 
conditions to help avoid overfishing. In doing so, 
fishing becomes a long-term activity where the 
resource users are responsible for the future of 
the sector and play an important role as stewards 
of the resource. However, as rights are allocated 
and limited, they also become valuable for 
stakeholders inside and outside the sector, and 
this may render the sector subject to investment 
forces with different objectives from those of 
historical users and the communities that have 
relied on the local aquatic resources. Therefore, it 
is vital to safeguard legitimate tenure rights 
against transactions that could threaten the 
livelihoods, food security and nutrition of coastal 
communities. This consideration is manifest in 
the Committee on Food Security’s Principles 
for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and 
Food Systems (CFS-RAI), the CFS Voluntary 
Guidelines for Responsible Governance of Land, 
Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National 
Food Security (VGGT) and in the Voluntary 
Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale 
Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and 
Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines).
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Different ways of recognizing and allocating 
tenure, user and access rights generate 
important social, economic and environmental 
trade-offs. It is vital to understand this point 
as aquatic resources are gaining attention in 
national policies for economic development 
and conservation of natural resources. 
Competition over resources within the fisheries 
and aquaculture sector can arise where tenure 
systems are not clearly defined or not properly 
enforced. This is, for example, the case where 
large-scale and small-scale fisheries target the 
same fish stocks, or where a growing aquaculture 
industry in freshwater and marine areas 
claims more space and generates unintended 
consequences for capture fisheries. Similarly, the 
expansion of other sectors, such as tourism, 
urban development, port infrastructure, energy, 
transport and other industries, in locations where 
fisheries or aquaculture operations and related 
activities take place needs careful assessment. 
Such expansion can generate livelihood 
opportunities that complement or integrate 
fisheries activities. More often, however, fisheries 
and aquaculture activities are not considered and 
nor are stakeholders consulted, despite the fact 
that international norms call for their inclusion 
in decision-making about who is granted tenure 
and user rights to land, water and aquatic 
resources, and how. International norms also 
require consideration of fisheries and aquaculture 
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