32 value chain. This would be faster than waiting until the government introduces regulations for the
fishery. However, all the interviewees say that the influence of the government is needed to implement, regulate and enforce the fishery management plan. According to the interviewees, to
reach step four of the BSC FIP stages regulations at national level need to be introduced by the government.
A second obstruction to overcome that was indicated was a lack of scientific research on BSC which is resulting in data deficiencies. According to the interviewee of the Crab Council, it is necessary to let
research validate some of the policies recommended or agreements implemented within the BSC FIP, like the minimum size limit which will be introduced later. Therefore, in order to make regulations
that fit the life history of the BSC, a supply of scientific information is needed. Scientists need the time to conduct research and to draw conclusions which can validate policies and can support the
regulations. APRI is actively trying to involve research institutes in the studies to the BSC fishery and keeps trying to put the BSC on the scientific agenda.
If the BSC FIP participants would wait with undertaking actions until the scientific outcomes would be presented, the process towards improvement would be delayed. Therefore they are trying to do
something by undertaking action themselves while waiting for the scientific outcomes of the research. The BSC FIP participants are helping and stimulating the government and scientists to make
choices, while at the same time they are implementing their own agreements even though these are not always scientifically validated yet. The operational objectives on which the BSC FIP participants
themselves focus now are stock-enhancement projects, education and agreements that require a change in the practices in the fishery.
4.3.3 Indicators of improvement
In order to be able to state that objectives are reached and a situation is improved, it is necessary to indicate a difference between the previous and current situation. In Figure 2.5 this is shown as the
transition from the left to the right figure which can be measured by indicators for improvement. Since the goal of sustainability is widely interpretable, identification of indicators for improvement
could help in understanding what the BSC FIP participants perceive as improvement in practice. The interviewees could not clearly state based on what indicators they will call the fishery ‘sustainable’.
Different indicators came forward during the interviews, but none of them were specific. Interviewees gave different indications of ways to determine whether a sustainable state has been
reach and therefore whether improvement took place. They regarded the SFP improvement tracker, the satisfaction of actors in the value chain and an increased biomass. First, they mentioned that a
sustainable state would be reached when all the stages of the SFP improvement tracker were passed. The goal of sustainability would be achieved step-by-step by following the SFP milestones as they are
formulated in the FIP improvement tracker, but the interviewees did not mention how they would be able to measure if a next step was reached. It was clear that the interviewees were aware of the
steps of the improvement tracker, but they did not define specific indicators on which they would test the steps of the improvement tracker.
However, interviewees attempted to give their view on indicators for improvement. The second indicator for improvement that came forward was that a sustainable state would be reached when
there are no complaints from the governments, fishermen, mini-plants, scientists and APRI-
33 members. In other words, according the interviewee people would know that improvement is
reached when everybody feels they get their own profit and when the government and scientists say there is no problem with the activities in the BSC fishery. Two other interviewees said that
improvement is now measured in terms of biomass. The BSC FIP participants are trying to put a stock assessment in place in order to be able to say something about the BSC stock status; whether the
population is increasing or declining. An indicator of improvement would then be an increasing population. According to the interviewee this could also be based on fishery dependent data which is
gathered in the fishery. However, no indication could be given about the size of the stock at a sustainable state of the fishery.
I identified some key difference between the biomass as an indicator of improvement and the satisfaction of actors. The first is a scientific approach in which the actual stock status should be
compared to a desired stock status and the second is a human-based approach. The first indicator of sustainability is quantifiable, while the second is more subjective. Another important distinction
between these two indicators for sustainability is that in the first only data on the stock status are taken into account, while the second takes into account the different actors within and beyond the
fishery’s supply chain. The latter is an example of how a FIP can be adjusted to local and global needs and circumstances in the fishery. However, it did not get clear which of the indicators of
improvement, or maybe both, would be used in practice. The interviewees brought up some difficulties concerning the indicators of improvement. Two of the
interviewed APRI-members specifically mentioned that they do not have the expertise in tracking improvement themselves, since they focus on the crab business and not on research. The private
sector wants to get a national framework in place to measure improvement and they said they need a research branch of the governments or other scientists or NGOs to help them with that. On top of
that, several interviewees suggested that improvement should be considered case-by-case and location-by-location due to the nature of the FIP and the differing indicators of improvement.
According to the interviewees, actions are undertaken both on local level with local communities and on national level with the government and all these actions have their own achievements and
therefore their own indicators of improvement. Currently, these achievements are not systematically measured in practice.
The BSC FIP participants define improvement as sustainability. This is seen by them as being able to continue the business in the future by ensuring the survival of the resource. Although the chain
actors and external actor have differing motivations to be involved in the FIP due to their backgrounds as businessmen and NGO, they share the perception on improvement. The perception
on improvement is translated in the system objective of sustainability. This goal should be reached by following the SFP improvement tracker which requires involvement of the government and of
scientists. However, they also choose to set other objectives, because waiting for the government and scientists would cost time. Those other operational objectives regard the resource or the crab
value chain itself instead of external actors only. Indicators for improvement are not explicitly set, but they either regard the stock status, the satisfaction of chain and external actors or both. In case
the satisfaction of chain actors is really an indicator of improvement this could imply that the success of the BSC FIP is adjusted to the local needs of the fishers. This is in contrast with the previously
introduced global network of actors that is determining the BSC FIP objectives in which the regional
34 and local value chain actors were not directly included. However, no explicit indicators for
improvement came forward during the interviews.
4.4 The definition of the FIP measures
