Global fisheries: Can they be both ethical and sustainable?

Background/Question/Methods

The dismal state of world fisheries today reflects humanity's moral failure to maintain ecosystem health and productivity, while benefitting from nature's goods and services. Accelerating depletion of fishery resources jeopardizes not only ecological integrity, but also social justice. This raises ecological ethics issues of fishery systems regarding how the exploitation, allocation, and distribution of fishery resources affect human food security, resilience of fishing communities, and livelihood options for current and future generations. In the face of diminishing global resources and growing food demand, we ask: Can fisheries be both ethical and sustainable?

Results/Conclusions

Fisheries compliance to the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, developed by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, has been recently correlated with ecological sustainability, measured by various ecosystem health indices. Using Rapfish, a rapid-appraisal scoring framework that integrates the human and ecological dimensions, we evaluate semi-quantitatively and with uncertainty estimates, the ethical status of national fisheries and compare this with their Code compliance. Based on this refined analysis, we conclude that ethical fisheries are sustainable fisheries, and highlight emerging environmental laws and collaborative governance approaches that may help achieve both goals.