The FAO Fisheries Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fishing support the implementation of the UN FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing, agreed in 1995. Of the Guidelines, the most ground breaking are the 1995 Reference Points for Fisheries Management, (accompanying the Code of Conduct and providing the Code’s technical and intelectual justification), and the later 1999 Indicators for Sustainable Development. The Precautionary Approach to Fisheries: Scientific Papers (1996) are also useful. Despite their technical nature, these three documents contain accessible material informative to a non-specialist needing to get  beyond the superficial. They remain relevant and current.

Specifically, the authors describe the flaws in a problematic technical concept called ‘Maximum Sustainable Yield’ or MSY that has and does dominate global fisheries management. Indeed such flaws had been known for many years amongst experts. In essence, the calculations underlying MSY carry too great a risk that the ‘maximum sustainable yield’ isn’t in fact sustainable. Nor does it take account of the needs of other stocks and other wildlife. Indeed, the original EU Common Fisheries Policy was founded on MSY, and the attempt to implement it contributed to stock depletion – all of which has rather got lost in the mists of time as the people who implemented the policy are long since retired. Reference Points for Fisheries Management recommended (see sections 2.4.7 and 2.5) that MSY should be used, if at all, as a ‘limit reference point’, such that the stock size that theoretically would be required for MSY is the lowest level allowable, and something to be avoided, not a target.

Indicators for Sustainable Development set out (p. 22) a simple five point assessment scheme (worse to best practice) to overcome these problems, building on the FAO Code of Conduct concept of negative limits to be avoided and positive targets to be reached. This has formed the basis of our own scoring system.

However for political and legal reasons it has proved difficult to let go of the concept of MSY: these conclusions were downplayed in the overarching Precautionary Approach to Capture Fisheries  Guidelines (for example the emphasis changed from ‘shouldn’t’ in the summary of the Reference Points for Fisheries Management to ‘could’ in paragraph 29 or the Precautionary Approach ) and MSY now once more features centre-stage as a target for fisheries management. We have no doubt that the Reference Point authors got it right, and our five point evaluation of the environmental impact of fisheries we believe stays true to the the approach outlined  in Sustainable Indicators.

Last, when the 2002 WSSD declares that managers should  Maintain or restore stocks to levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield , this is not actually a contradiction of the various Guidelines that point out the risks, as the stock levels advocated in those documents are of course greater than those required for (theoretical) MSY. This might sound like nit-picking, but the ambiguity does hint at the disagreements then and now about just what are appropriate precautionary targets.