- How can the MSC align the conflicting interests of Stakeholders?
The questions begs a valid point and presents the challenges in the article and the Global Fishing Industry. It is evident in the case that there it has taken a significant amount of time for the notion of responsible fishing techniques. In the 50’s when the global fishing industry started picking up speed and the “Commons” precedent started taking effect with everyone trying to fish the maximum they can in order to maximize their immediate profit. It took almost three decades for communities to start feeling and exploring the effects of this overfishing and there was a need for organizations government and non-government to start looking into the disconcerting statistics.
It took a long time for the idea that protection is necessary a long time and changes be implemented, but that does not and should not be the case in the future. It is non and government organizations’ task and responsibility to implement changes. It has also taken them a long time to implement changes and when needed which needs to be a lesson learned from the past. With the rates of sustainable fisheries worldwide continuing to decrease this is not the time to sit back and accept that the sometimes unclear guidelines are enough to combat the issues at stake and save the world oceans. Time is of the essence and resources should be concentrated in the implementation of popularization programs with all the stakeholders. The timeline for us to realize those issues and start doing something about them have not been the shortest with one of the more significant positive developments being the implementation for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) in 1997. In co-operation with one of the largest fisheries in the world Unilever they implemented guidelines for steps that fisheries would need to follow in order to get the MSC stamp of