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Innovations in seafood supply chains:
Community supported fisheries and consumer-facing traceability
Subproject 2: Exploring Community-Supported Fisheries and their Effect on the Triple
Bottom Line of Fisheries in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
Becca Aucoin ([email protected])
Rational: Fish harvesters are increasingly facing complex informational and sustainability demands. These are, in part, related to increasing market,
regulatory and climate change risks. The aim of this research project is to study two innovative seafood governance approaches, namely community
supported fisheries (CSF) and consumer-facing traceability (CFT), to ascertain their potential for helping to mitigate these risk and contribute to triple
bottom line sustainability outcomes.
Background:
There is a great deal of uncertainty concerning the future of the world’s
commercial fish stocks in an ever-changing political, economic, and
environmental climate. Recent studies have illustrated the dire state of
global commercial fish stocks. As overfishing continues to occur at an
alarming rate, projections have shown that the ocean may be devoid of fish
within our lifetime. Fisheries mismanagement is a local issue that has had
global ramifications. There is a need for fisheries management reform and
an overhaul of fisheries supply chains to allow for more sustainable and
economically viable practices to be developed. There is also a need for
resilient systems that can adapt to changes in species availability over time
as our climate changes.
Yet the fisheries crisis is no longer just one of production, the crisis has
expanded to being considered one of fisheries consumption. We have
reached a point in time where consumers are becoming more aware of
where their food is coming from. This connection to the seafood supply
chain as well as other food sectors has led to an increased demand for
locally-sourced and sustainable products and an increase in popularity and
prevalence of community-supported fisheries, or CSFs. Based on the concept
of community-supported agriculture, CSFs have been established in both
coastal and in-land areas to solve a variety of problems within the seafood
sector. CSFs, although diverse in mandate, tend to share some common
properties, namely involving a shortened supply chain with a goal of
increasing the sustainability of the fisheries structure in some way.
Figure 1: A conceptual model of the intersection between ecology,
economics, and community, proposing that a community-supported
fishery could increase the sustainability of each of these dimensions
within the fishery sector
Framework and methods:
Management problem:
While fisheries management issues occur globally, I will use Cape Breton,
Nova Scotia as a case study to explore how the use of a communitysupported fishery can impact the “triple bottom line”. One of the major
issues identified within the fisheries sector in Cape Breton is the current
structure of the seafood supply chain. Fish harvesters have called for
improved sales, marketing, and product development strategies along the
supply chain that would allow a greater economic return as well as more
control over where their catches are sold. The establishment of a
community-supported fishery in Cape Breton could be the solution that fish
harvesters are looking for.
The Question
How would the establishment of a community-supported fishery affect
the triple bottom line of the local fishery in Cape Breton?
Sub-Questions
What would a community-supported fishery in Cape Breton look like
(management structure, infrastructure, distribution model, supply
chain, species composition)?
What is the triple bottom line? How would each element be
impacted through the creation of a CSF (ecology, economy,
community)?
While it is argued that CSFs can lead to some improvements, the
extent to which these benefits are spread over different
sustainability dimensions remains understudied. A framework called
the Fisheries Performance Indicators (Anderson et al, 2015), uses
three metrics to examine the sustainability of a fishery; ecology,
economics, and community, the so called “triple bottom line”. These
pillars within fishing communities are highly interconnected and it is
argued here that they could form a conceptual model through which
the sustainability of a CSF can be assessed critically (Figure 1).
This project will explore the feasibility of implementing a CSF in Cape
Breton based on these three sustainability factors through the use of
interviews and focus groups with actors along the supply chain.
Potential results:
It is expected that the creation of a CSF
in Cape Breton would yield positive
results for all members along a
shortened supply chain. Direct
marketing would give more power to
licence holders concerning where and
how their catches are sold. Because this
study is being approached from three
sectors, it is likely that some
sustainability elements within the
project will be more positively impacted
than others.