Consumer pressure can put Chinese fisheries on a more sustainable course

Following the controversy over admissions by a major Chinese-operated tuna fishing company, seeking to list in Hong Kong, that it breached quotas for the most vulnerable species in the Pacific Ocean, there has been a rush of other fishing companies seeking certification to prove they're sustainable.

Sustainability came under the spotlight in October when, in a draft prospectus for its planned US$100 million initial public offering, the Dalian-based China Tuna Industry Group suggested it has been taking advantage of lax maritime enforcement to exceed catch quotas for bigeye and yellowfin tuna in the Pacific.

Europe-based bodies like Friend of the Sea and the Marine Stewardship Council certify, for a fee, that fisheries are operating sustainably. They have been reporting an upsurge in demand from large Chinese fishing companies, some of whom are the world's largest operators of trawlers on the high seas.

Overfishing - much of it by large transnational vessels - has decimated stocks and communities relying on the harvest in the North Atlantic in Europe as well as the East China Sea. It has also affected coastal communities in Africa and Latin America.

Certification schemes will be important tools to help control overfishing because budget cuts in major jurisdictions like the European Union and the US - traditionally patrollers of the world's high seas fisheries - have weakened enforcement and monitoring to protect overfished species in the world's oceans. Pointedly, it was an environmental group, the WWF - not an international fishing tribunal - that derailed China Tuna Industry Group's IPO by investigating the firm's data. That led to Greenpeace raising the alarm.

Increasingly, Chinese firms are keen to be covered by sustainability certification programmes as it can boost sales to Western clients. Such certification is popular among multinational retailers, hoteliers and restaurateurs who want to burnish their green image. Chinese seafood processors invariably pay for certification because Western clients demand it, not because they care about the sustainability of the species they process and package for export.