Private Sustainability Certification of Arctic Fisheries: Lessons from a large-scale and a small-scale fishery in the Northeast Atlantic

Certification according to private sustainability standards (ecolabelling) has become an important addition to public fisheries management. Under the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Standard, the status of the fishery’s target stocks, its impact on the ecosystem and the effectiveness of its management system are assessed. Becoming and remaining certified requires continuous behavioural adaptation through a fine-meshed system of conditions attached to certificates. In this chapter, MSC certification of two clusters of fisheries in Arctic waters is discussed, one large- and one small-scale. In the Barents Sea cod and haddock fisheries, the main obstacle to certification has been the fisheries’ impact on bottom habitats, and fishing companies have introduced voluntary measures beyond what is required by law to remain certified. In the local lumpfish fisheries in Greenland, Iceland and Norway, biological reference points, harvest control rules and seabird and marine mammal mitigation measures are the direct result of MSC certification, which has found a niche as a supplement to national legislation and international agreements.