MSC Scoping Study of South African Small-Scale Fisheries

The MSC has recognised the lack of small-scale fisheries in developing countries that are MSC-certified and has initiated a Development Programme that seeks to make certification a feasible prospect for small-scale fisheries in the developing world. As part of this process the MSC’s Southern Africa Programme Manager has commissioned the Environmental Evaluation Unit to conduct a scoping exercise that can explore the possibilities of certifying small-scale fisheries in South Africa. The objective is to get a preliminary sense of the specific issues that need to be considered if fisheries in this ‘sector’ are to have any chance of passing the MSC’s certification process. Essentially the exercise seeks to answer the following key questions: are any fisheries at a stage where they could embark on pre-assessment, and if so, which fisheries are these?

If not, what needs to change for more fisheries to become eligible for assessment, and how can the MSC contribute to these changes by adapting its certification processes to suit the context of small-scale fishing in South Africa? To answer these questions, the scoping exercise was required to: develop criteria whereby small-scale fisheries in South Africa can be evaluated so that potential candidate fisheries for certification can be identified; to apply the criteria developed to the small-scale fisheries sector in South Africa, identifying the most promising candidate fisheries for certification, and profiling between 3 and 5 candidate fisheries that should either have the potential to replace imported products in the local supply chain or have the possibility of supplying to the export markets where MSC-certified products are in demand.