Effective Fisheries Management Through Traceability

Increasingly the seafood sustainability discussion includes calls for transparency as a solution to combatting illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUU) and mislabeling and fraud. Seafood-value chains remain some of the most opaque in our global food system, and thus traceability is being forwarded as a way to validate transparency claims. Yet whether or not sustainability gains arise from traceability is debated, and, in fact, implementing traceability may impose disproportionate costs to some producers, especially small-scale ones and producers in developing countries.

Megan Bailey, assistant professor with the Marine Affairs Program at Dalhousie University and Canada research chair in integrated ocean and coastal governance, will discuss her efforts to implement full-chain consumer facing traceability in Indonesian hand-line tuna fisheries. Bailey’s work focuses on finding solutions at the intersection of markets and states to promote sustainable fishing and sustainable consumption.

Sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program.