Comparing voluntary and government-mandated management measures for meeting sustainable fishing targets
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Management of natural resources and environmental systems has often involved top-down approaches in which government agencies set and enforce regulations on extractive activities. More recently, market-driven approaches were introduced to incentivise producers to voluntarily engage in practices that align with management objectives and support regulations. For the first time, we compare government and voluntary approaches within fisheries management systems and quantify their relative influences on the sustainability status of fish populations. Voluntary measures include eco-certification against the Marine Stewardship Council's (MSC) Fisheries Standard and Fishery Improvement Projects (FIP). Government-mandated measures are implemented for individual populations, or else at national and international levels. Using a hierarchical time series analysis, we treated each of these measures as independent interventions potentially affecting trends in fishing pressure and biomass of nearly 300 populations. Supporting earlier findings, we confirmed a strong effect of government rebuilding plans in sharply reducing fishing pressure and allowing population biomass to recover. Other government-mandated measures further contributed to reducing fishing pressure. While simultaneously accounting for government measures, we found that biomass increases were associated with stronger incentives generated by voluntary measures. This influence was attributed to the opening of conditions of certification or suspension of certification for MSC fisheries, while no clear influence was attributed to FIPs. MSC certification was rarely observed in the absence of strong government-mandated measures, however, suggesting that sustainability-related incentives associated with voluntary measures can promote more desirable environmental outcomes for target stocks if used in parallel with more conventional approaches to management of natural resources.
Authors: Michael C. Melnychuk, Samantha Lees, Pedro Veiga, Jennifer Rasal, Nicole Baker, Lauren Koerner, Daniel Hively, Hiroyuki Kurota, Carryn L. de Moor, Maite Pons, Pamela M. Mace, Ana M. Parma, Alessandro Mannini, L. Richard Little, Jilali Bensbai, Arturo Muñoz Albero, Beth Polidoro, Ernesto Jardim, Ray Hilborn, Catherine Longo
Institutions: Marine Stewardship Council, University of Washington, University of Hawaii System, Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, Fisheries Resources Institute, University of Cape Town, Centro Científico Tecnológico Patagónico, National Research Council, Institute for Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnology, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Institut National de Recherche Halieutique, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Arizona State University
Language: English
Subfield: Aquatic Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Life below water
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,750
OpenAlex ID: W4406552188