Over the past fifteen years a number of transnational certification and labeling schemes have emerged with the aim to foster sustainable fisheries and aquaculture practices worldwide. Despite notable successes in the uptake and implementation of these standards, few measurable environmental improvements have been achieved on a global scale to date. This paper explores the conditions for effective governance taking into account external and internal attributes of the relevant rule-setting organizations. The analysis provided in this paper is situated in a broader debate regarding the effectiveness of transnational forms of governance and thereby contributes to recent efforts to build clearer theoretical propositions on the basis of more nuanced theoretically and empirically informed analyses.
Highlights
- We explore the conditions for effective transnational fisheries and aquaculture governance through certification and labeling.
- Complex problem-structure presents an obstacle to effective governance of marine resources.
- Environmental standards are not particularly stringent overall and the quality of the audit exhibits significant variation.
- Discrimination in access can be observed affecting primarily civil society organizations and Southern actors.
- Uptake has been modest so far, particularly in aquaculture, but trends are promising.
Keywords
Transnational rule-setting organizations; Marine governance; Effectiveness; Sustainability; Fisheries;Aquaculture
