The World Summit on Sustainable Development Plan of Implementation, agreed in Johannesburg in 2002 is the key agreement by global governments setting out the route by which humanity will attempt to achieve a sustainable future.

Fisheries is dealt with in Section 4, where paragraph 31 commits all governments to  “implement the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries” and “Maintain or restore stocks to levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield [MSY] with the aim of achieving these goals for depleted stocks on an urgent basis and where possible not later than 2015”.

If you suspect that a lot lies behind those conditionals, and references to MSY, you would be right. There was much politicking to achieve even this. Its also easy to be cynical, and conclude that having given themselves until 2015, the immediate action required to achieve this (because fish take time to grow!) would probably not be taken. Indeed, we are already almost half way to 2015, and precious little seems to have happened.

Nevertheless, this is what we have, and it is important to keep up the pressure, not just because of the environment, but because of the need for sustainable abundant fisheries as a wonderful source of food and income. Governments should be held to account.

This is why we put the effort in to produce a scoring system based on all of the FAO Code, which would show how well the fisheries and restaurants were doing in their efforts to meet the 2015 goal, and identify any obstacles. The UK government, most recently in Fisheries 2027 has accepted that it is committed to implementing the FAO Code, and – within the obvious limitations – by our efforts we hope to play a constructive role in helping them to achieve this.