News

Tracy Van Holt and Beatrice Crona has received a SEK 4 million grant from the Swedish Research Council Formas for a five year project to investigate how supply chains can improve fisheries sustainability globally.

Background

While global seafood demand is rising, most stocks worldwide are declining or have reached their full potential. To ensure sustained future supply of marine protein for a growing world population, a transformation is needed in how fish is sourced. Fishery Improvement Projects (FIP) work with supply-chain actors to reduce environmental impact and achieve such change. Despite recent increase in FIPs (~100 today) there is little systematic scientific evaluation of their process and impact.

Aims

The project team, which will also include Therese Lindahl, the Beijer Institute and a PhD student, will systematically analyze what strategies undertaken by supply chain actors lead to more sustainable use of wild marine resources. They have partnered with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), an international business NGO who pioneered the FIP model in the early 2000s. This gives them a unique opportunity to both access data and co-produce research with an organization at the heart of fisheries transformation initiatives, but also to disseminate and implement some of the findings in ongoing initiatives globally.