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1 Introduction
1.1 Problem statement
Sustainably managing natural resources has been a pressing topic on global political agendas. Eco- labels appear to be increasingly important for promoters of sustainability Bush et al., 2013. A
prominent example of eco-labelling in fisheries is the Marine Stewardship Council MSC certification Pauly et al., 2005; Bush et al., 2013. For its establishment in 1997 a new, market-based governance
arrangement was created. It was established after Unilever, a market actor, partnered with the WWF, a NGO, in order to impose market pressure on fisheries management regimes. Traditionally,
regulations were imposed by the government as top-down regulations without involvement of other actors. However, a shift from government towards governance has taken place over the years.
Governance can be seen as a change in governing styles from a style in which the government was a dominant actor to one “in which boundaries between and within public and private sectors have
become blurred” Stoker, 1998: p.17. It can be seen as a movement away from the nation-state having the decision making power, towards the involvement of the private sector and the society.
Rhodes 1996: p.652 refers to governance as “self-organizing, interorganizational networks”, which implies that the government is not involved and that new relations among actors are created, which
can be defined as networks of actors. The MSC eco-label is a prominent example of this movement away from the nation-state and the formulation of new network relations.
Not all fisheries can become MSC certified directly, because they do not yet meet the MSC’s requirements for certification. These fisheries need to be improved in order to get more sustainable
and get ready for certification. Fishery Improvement Projects FIPs have arisen as new governance arrangements in fisheries management in which the involvement of actors within the fisheries value
chain is central as well as a movement towards improvement. A FIP is a step-wise approach that in the end should lead to improvement of the fishery, most often defined as sustainability Doddema,
2012. According to Doddema 2012, the recently promoted FIPs are often linked to MSC as they are based on the MSC principles. FIPs give fisheries the opportunity to systematically work towards
sustainability when certification is not yet possible. The establishment of FIPs was a movement away from the state, putting fisheries management in the hands of the private sector. The concept of
FIPs does no longer imply the top-down implementation of regulations by the nation-state, but it implies the creation of incentives to change through the value chain by the private sector.
At the basis of a value chain are the principles of production and trade. Practices of local fishermen have increasingly become embedded in global production and trade networks since they have been
integrated in global markets. Fishing practices that used to be carried out to provide food for the local communities are now accommodating international demand. Internationally, the demand for
sustainably produced seafood is increasing and therefore a change of practices is now required from the local fishers, additional to providing the resource. The local producers act on a different scale
than the consumers which makes the relations between supply and demand less clear than what they used to be before the international embeddedness of the fishery. Local fishers have to respond
to the demand from consumers they have never met before and with which they do not directly trade. Bush and Oosterveer 2007 have described these relations as the currently misunderstood
link between producers and global networks. FIPs have to deal with this often slightly understood
2 link, because they use the value chain as a means to implement fisheries management. FIP
participants are typically chain actors after Bolwig et al., 2010 and have to use the structure of the value chain to create incentives to change through the value chain. Within FIPs, the connection
between the producers and global trade networks are important, since they determine the flow of commodity from the producers to the exporters and retailers, but also the reverse flow of
information from the exporters and retailers back to the producers. When communicating the information through the value chain FIP participants are confronted with
different actors that might capture and process information differently. Several studies have shown that fishers can have a different perception on the stock status than scientists due to the sources of
information they capture and the way they interpret that information among others, Neis et al., 1999; Verweij et al., 2010. Perception differences about the status of the stock and which
management measures would be effective have hindered multi-actor debates in finding appropriate management McClanahan et al., 2005; Verweij et al., 2010. Due to the different interpretation of
the stock status, actors had differing perceptions on what measures could improve the stock status and whether the stock status had to be improved in the first place. When a management measure is
implemented that is not in line with actors’ perception on the status of the stock, this might result in non-compliance.
In her study on FIPs, Doddema 2012: p.66 indicated that “[a]s FIPs are geared towards providing sustainable seafood for the international market, there is a chance that fishermen will not really
benefit from being sustainably managed.” It is exactly the response of the fishermen to the FIP management that will be investigated in this study. This will be done by looking at the role of
information and perceptions on the implementation of the FIP measures; i.e. on the process of changing practices of actors in the value chain. Since FIPs have to deal with a variety of actors along
different scales of the value chain it is deemed important to understand how the flows of information between these actors and perceptions of these actors influence the implementation of
the measures. Analysing the actors’ responses to the FIP measures and their perceptions on improvement should provide insight in whether they benefit from the FIP management. Additionally,
Doddema stated that in order to achieve their objectives, FIPs should consider the pre-existing relations and practices that shape fishers’ behaviour. In this study the practices of fishers in the value
chain will be mapped out. The flow of information from the global trade network will be analysed as well as the actors’ perceptions. These analyses should give insight in determining factors for the
practices of the actors. That way, they might contribute to the understanding of the previously introduced link between producers and the global network.
1.2 Background to the Indonesian BSC FIP
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