Creating a system for tracking environmental benefits resulting from MSC certification

The purpose of this project was to show the extent to which incremental environmental benefits could be demonstrated arising from certification of fisheries under the principles and criteria of the Marine Stewardship Council.

The project objectives fell into two modules. In the first module, tools and methodologies were developed to measure the environmental and ecological impacts of certification to the MSC standard in order to catalogue and assess the current evidence that the MSC eco-labelling programme results in benefits for the environment.

In the second module, the objective was to build a strategic framework for the future analysis of environmental impacts of certification to the MSC standard and the MSC programme, including recommendations for changes to current MSC methodology where appropriate; and to investigate evidence that the MSC programme has wider impacts on environmental sustainability of fisheries outside of specifically certified fisheries, and to build an ecological case for certification of fisheries to the MSC standard