Comment by Ray Hilborn, University of Washington (@hilbornr)

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [The Editor’s View] by John Sackton — October 15, 2015 — In a stunning display of arrogance and hubris, WWF which served on the Board of GSSI, (Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative) has come out with guns blazing against the GSSI benchmarking tool. WWF claims that certification schemes that meet the GSSI benchmark ‘do not indicate sustainability certification.’ (link)

This stance of WWF, designed entirely to protect their investment in their own model programs, namely the Marine Stewardship Council and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, spits in the face of the FAO Seafood Sustainability documents, which were recently called the most significant multilateral agreements to advance sustainability undertaken by the entire FAO organization.

The FAO Code of Conduct and Ecolabel Guidelines are best practice documents ratified by more than 170 governments, which constitute a legal basis for these governments to set laws and policy that results in long term fisheries sustainability.

At the recent 20th anniversary celebrations of this achievement in Vigo, Spain, FAO personnel showed how this set of documents and practices has essentially stopped the downward slide of fisheries that reached a crisis point in the 1990’s.

Indeed, when compared to other global problems from deforestation, falling biodiversity and extinction, and global warming, the FAO Responsible Fishing documents stand out as having had a profound impact on national laws and legislation that put science first, end overfishing in some areas, and above all begin to reverse the fisheries crisis that became acute in the 1990’s.

Now the WWF seeks to undermine that progress, by frightening retailers and seeking to perpetuate the global consumer confusion over what constitutes a sustainable fishery.

The WWF says “These ‘essential components’ designated by GSSI, can be used to evaluate whether certification schemes are consistent with the FAO CCRF and Guidelines, but not whether they certify sustainable fisheries or farms .”

Instead, the WWF wants the global retail community to adopt the WWF version of sustainability, which they themselves have said can only apply to the top 20% of a given sector.

The reason is that the WWF is not interested in a measure of sustainability, but rather in instituting a system of continuous improvement where the WWF and its allies determine what improvements are needed.

This is the exact opposite of the continuous improvement process of the Codex Alimentarius (Latin for “Book of Food”), which is the collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations relating to foods, food production and food safety. When people’s lives, health, and economic well being are at stake, continuous improvement is done through a rigorous process of scientific review and consensus adoption.  This is the same process used to improve and extend the FAO code of conduct.  But the WWF rejects this approach and instead claims only the WWF and its allies can design a continuously improving sustainability process.

For example, in their statement today they say “the GSSI essential components are not a sustainability benchmark and, as such, do not reflect best practice.”  Companies wanting to source sustainable seafood will need to consider additional criteria, including but not limited to the GSSI “supplementary” criteria. ”

WWF then goes on to suggest that “The GSSI tool does not consider social issues impacting the sustainability of fishing operations. ”

The reason the GSSI does not reflect social issues is because the tool began with an environmental and marine conservation mandate. The best practices to achieve sustainability under that mandate were negotiated and accepted as a legal document by more than 170 governments.

As social issues have become more prominent in the seafood sector, the agricultural sector, and the migrant labor sector, new norms of responsible social behavior are emerging within many appropriate UN international bodies, including the International Labor Organization. As these practices become codified, it may be possible for even the GSSI to adopt a Social Chapter, but for the WWF to criticize them for not having this is simply to try and undermine their strengths so as to maintain WWF’s position as arbiter of global marine and aquaculture sustainability.

At the heart of the dispute within the GSSI board has been the issue of whether the GSSI benchmark is a “pass/fail” benchmark, that provides a minimum credible standard meeting all the scientific and operational requirements for seafood and aquaculture sustainability, or whether GSSI simply becomes a ranking scheme where some participants, like MSC, are awarded A+, while other participants, like Viet Gap, are awarded a D-.

The NGO’s wanted the ranking scheme because they were unalterably opposed to a fundamental aspect of the FAO Mission: not allowing certification schemes to be used as trade barriers to prevent the international marketing of seafood from less developed countries.

A year ago, FAO informed the GSSI board that such ranking schemes were not compatible with the FAO documents on which seafood certifications were based. They said that if the NGOs on the GSSI Board insisted on such a ranking scheme, FAO would withdraw its support from GSSI.

Since every certification scheme on the planet, including the MSC and the ASC, claim they are founded based on the FAO fishing and ecolabeling principles, such a withdrawal would have exposed the NGO scheme for what it was: a power grab to prevent competition, especially to prevent government sanctioned schemes from becoming acceptable in the marketplace.

The GSSI board sided firmly with the FAO, and agreed that the every certification scheme that met the GSSI essential components would be certified as credibly meeting the FAO guidelines.

They retained the optional elements to allow various schemes to demonstrate particular skills or interests in different areas – but not to claim that only those areas represented the true measure of sustainability.

WWF is a major partner with a number of retailers and foodservice companies who are 100% committed to GSSI. In this case, their partners will have to tell them that the long term project of global seafood sustainability is more important than protecting the WWF’s own certification schemes.

Every major buyer has their own specifications.  In some cases it might be that suppliers adhere to a carbon budget, in others it might be a minimum wage, or contract transparancy.  Not every purchase specification has to be bound into a definition of “sustainability.”  When WWF argues that this is the only option, they are simply trying to assert a monopoly claim that only WWF sanctioned schemes are ‘sustainable.’

“WWF is concerned that the GSSI tool will lead to further confusion in the marketplace and sustainable sourcing claims that aren’t credible, ” said Richard Holland, Director, WWF Market Transformation Initiative. “We hope that GSSI will continue to strive to provide clarity to its supporters by ensuring that claims of meeting GSSI components reflect meeting the CCRF and FAO Guidelines, not certification of sustainable seafood, that the assessment guidance is clear and applied consistently, and that assessments are completed accurately by independent experts. ”

What Holland failed to understand is that the GSSI tool as released is incredibly strict and robust, and that it represents a real accomplishment for a certification scheme to meet its requirements.

But more importantly, WWF and Holland failed to see how valuable the GSSI is as a roadmap.

If a country like Vietnam or Indonesia wants to design laws, practices and enforcement mechanisms that can be certified by a third party as meeting the GSSI criteria, they need a road map. They need to know where to improve, where to put their resources, where to invest.

The WWF wants to overthrow all of that, and replace it with the slogan “Ask the WWF.” This is simply not a valid option for the 170+ countries that have committed to the FAO code.

The fact that WWF would fail to grasp how significant the GSSI is in advancing global seafood sustainability, and would in fact publicly try to undermine it by pissing on it to their retail and foodservice partners, is the ultimate act of selfish corruption.

In this case, WWF is stating its own institutional pride and power is more important than one of the greatest advances in global seafood sustainability in a generation.

This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.