Certification, Fisheries Improvement Projects
and responsible sourcing
The conventional approach to preparing a scoping document then an action plan for a FIP is to base it upon an MSC pre-assessment, which identifies the weaknesses of the fishery and what improvements have to be made. In this case, whilst a previous pre-assessment has been conducted in the last five years, it has not been made available to the consultants.
Services Provided:Under these circumstances, Poseidon wrote the preliminary scoping document in January 2018 (through another contract) using:
a) The background of a scoping document drafted for a similar pole and line fishery in the Eastern Atlantic and through knowledge of the fishery (based on field missions in Ghana for other assignments); and
b) Applying a precautionary approach to adapt the scoping document to the Ghanaian pole and line fishery. The aim was to present this preliminary document to the potential future FIP stakeholders and partners.
Following the first step above and to keep the objective of launching the FIP as soon as possible, Poseidon carried out the MSC pre-assessment and the action plan in March 2018 (this contract) by updating, amending, and correcting if necessary, the text of the preliminary scoping document based on the findings of the MSC pre-assessment report.
The FIP was officially launched in November 2018 (see WWF's specific publication here for instance).
The FIP progress can be followed online through dedicated pages on FisheryProgress.org. Fishery Progress is a website 'giving a range of information about global FIPs from a quick snapshot of progress and opportunities to get involved to detailed evidence for improvements'.
The action plan and the pre-assessment are online on the two websites above.