Authored by a team from Conservation International, the 91̽�� and other organizations, the paper is the first integrated approach to meeting this global challenge and will be presented as part of the UN Oceans Conference and the Seafood Summit, which both take place June 5-9 in New York and Seattle, respectively.

The article, published June 1 in Science, is in direct response to investigative reports by the Associated Press, the Guardian, The New York Times and other media outlets that uncovered glaring human rights violations on fishing vessels. The investigations tracked the widespread use of slave labor in Southeast Asia and its role in bringing seafood to American restaurants and supermarkets, chronicling the plight of fishermen tricked and trapped into working 22-hour days, often without pay and while enduring abuse.

Subsequent investigations have documented the global extent of these abuses in a wide array of countries.

“The scientific community has not kept pace with concerns for social issues in the seafood sector,” said lead author Jack Kittinger, Conservation International’s senior director for global fisheries and aquaculture. “The purpose of this initiative is to ensure that governments, businesses, and nonprofits are working together to improve human rights, equality and food and livelihood security. This is a holistic and comprehensive approach that establishes a global standard to address these social challenges.”

The paper identifies three key principles that together establish a global standard for social responsibility in the seafood sector: protecting human rights, dignity and respecting access to resources; ensuring equality and equitable opportunities to benefit; and improving food and livelihood security.

“This paper stresses that if we are serious about social responsibility in our food systems, we need to go beyond dealing with the ‘worst-case’ headlines of ‘slavery at sea,'” said co-author , a 91̽��professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs.

“We argue that committing to sustainable seafood sourcing and supply is also about ensuring people who work in the food business ― whether as harvesters or processors and packers ― have decent work. It is also about ensuring communities who rely on the sea economically and culturally, particularly coastal indigenous communities, don’t have their harvest rights appropriated by powerful outside interests.”

More than half of the world’s fisheries sector workforce is female, and there are still widespread gender-based disparities in income and working conditions, Allison added.

Seafood is the world’s most internationally traded food commodity. By 2030, the oceans will need to supply more than 150 million metric tons of seafood to meet the demands of a growing population. The paper calls on governments, businesses and the scientific community to take measurable steps to ensure seafood is sourced without harm to the environment and people that work in the seafood industry.

“In some places, commercial fishing boats from other parts of the world are virtually robbing local small-scale fishers of the fish that they rely on to make a living and survive. Fisheries are not truly sustainable unless local people are able to benefit from the harvesting of resources,” said co-author , a postdoctoral researcher at the UW.

As part of the initiative, Conservation International has organized a , calling on governments, NGOs, businesses and other organizations to improve social responsibility in the seafood sector.

Zach Koehn, a doctoral student in aquatic and fishery sciences, is another co-author from the UW.

This was adapted from a Conservation International .

A code of conduct for marine conservation would help prevent human rights violations that might occur during conservation and promote fair, socially responsible decision-making when planning and carrying out actions to protect the ocean. The were published May 15 in the journal Marine Policy.

“The benefit of developing a code of conduct is that we are taking past mistakes and learning from them,” said lead author , a researcher at the 91̽��, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. “We are trying to suggest a way forward and ultimately to increase the success of conservation.”

An international group of academics and practitioners from universities, government agencies and nonprofit organizations convened at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s ― the world’s largest recurring conservation event ― in Honolulu last year to discuss the need for a marine code of conduct and put together a framework for what such a document would include. This discussion, along with a review of existing conservation policies, is summarized in the new paper.

“Bringing together this broad group of experts is really the first step in a longer process,” Bennett explained. “What we are calling for here is for the development and application of a code of conduct by the entire marine conservation community. This will require some of the key players in marine conservation to step up and support this initiative.”

A number of human rights violations have occurred as byproducts of conservation activities in various parts of the world. In Tanzania, for example, in the government’s attempt to protect the area. In South Africa, areas that were designated for marine protection are cited as examples of “” ― policies or actions that take away resources and rights of small-scale fishing communities.

Part of the problem, the authors say, is that marine conservation is relatively new and it is ramping up quickly to meet to protect 10 percent of the oceans by 2020. Mistakes or negligence can happen under tight deadlines. Additionally, oceans have several unique qualities that make it difficult to navigate conservation work: property rights are not as clearly defined in the sea as on land; jurisdictions are hard to define and rules are hard to enforce; and there are stark differences in opinion over whether to further exploit the ocean’s natural resources or protect them.

It is perhaps the world’s newest “Wild West” scenario.

“The oceans are a busy place these days, with everyone trying to stake their claim with different end goals in mind,” Bennett said. “Dealing with issues around how decisions are made, who is involved and being clear about the rationales for decisions ― and putting that information on the table in a transparent way ― are some fundamental challenges to making marine conservation happen in a good way.”

The paper’s authors lay out a number of social justice, accountability and decision-making principles that could be used for a marine conservation code of conduct. These include topics such as indigenous rights, food and livelihood security, inclusivity and transparency. They also list draft objectives for further development, and they cite examples of good and bad outcomes from conservation activities.

In British Columbia, for example, the of all affected parties. In Hawaii, a marine national monument while protecting the ecosystem’s health and diversity. Lessons learned from these positive examples, and others, can also be used to guide development of an international code of conduct, Bennett said.

The authors plan to discuss their recommendations at several upcoming international ocean meetings, including the in June, the in September and the conference in October. They hope other scientists, policymakers and funders will weigh in on what should be included in such a document, then get to work on drafting a code of conduct.

They expect the final document will be used as a tool to educate and guide the actions of the next generation of conservation practitioners and advocates and, when necessary, as a means to hold groups accountable for their actions.

“The practice of marine conservation always involves trade-offs. This analysis makes it clear that society’s most vulnerable cannot be expected to carry the main burdens of conservation,” said co-lead author , a 91̽��professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and the Jackson School of International Studies. “Without taking into careful consideration the principles of this analysis, conservation will likely fail in the long term and have unintended negative impacts on society and environments.”

The paper’s other co-lead authors are and of the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program at the University of British Columbia. is another 91̽��co-author. The full list of authors is available in the paper.

This work was funded by the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Bennett was funded by the Banting and Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellowship programs. The paper is an output of the OceanCanada Partnership, the Too Big to Ignore Global Partnership for Small-Scale Fisheries Research and the Community Conservation Research Network.

###

For more information, contact Nathan Bennett at Nathan.bennett@ubc.ca.

People must be part of the equation in conservation projects. This will increase local support and the effectiveness of conservation.

That’s the main conclusion of a published online Nov. 29 in the journal Biological Conservation. In it, an international group of scientists recognizes the need to consider humans’ livelihoods, cultural traditions and dependence on natural resources when planning and carrying out conservation projects around the world.

“We really need to think about people as we’re creating conservation initiatives. Forgetting about humans in the conservation recipe is like forgetting yeast in a loaf of bread,” said lead author , a researcher at the 91̽��, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University.

��As the Earth continues to lose species and natural resources, the common approach to conservation has been to emphasize natural science to solve ecological problems, leaving people’s relationships to natural resources out of the discussion. Increasingly, natural scientists and social scientists are partnering to try to consider both the needs of nature and of stakeholders. But for lack of good precedent, funding and will, often conservation organizations and activities don’t fully consider the human dimensions of conservation, the authors found.

“When people are ignored and conservation measures are put in, we see opposition, conflict and often failure,” Bennett said. “These problems require the best available evidence, and that includes having both natural and social scientists at the table.”

This paper follows dozens of studies that point out the need for humans to be considered in environmental management and conservation, but few have articulated the benefits of doing so and exactly how to do this, Bennett explained. This review paper is the first to bring together the entire storyline by listing the practical contributions the variety of social sciences can offer to improve conservation.

“This paper helps us to move beyond statements about the need for this toward actually setting the agenda,” Bennett said.

Two years ago, Bennett convened an international working group to find ways to practically involve more social scientists from fields such as geography, history, anthropology and economics in conservation projects. This paper is one of several outcomes from that working group.����published in July 2016 suggests that conservation organizations and funders should put more emphasis on social sciences and explains what an ideal “conservation team” could look like.

“Modern environmental problems require diverse and creative teams to find solutions,” Bennett explained.

This new study calls for action to ensure that we have learned the lessons from past failures and successes of ignoring or considering human dimensions in conservation.

In Thailand, for example, officials set up a series of marine protected areas along the country’s coastline to try to conserve threatened habitats, including coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass meadows. But they didn’t consider the thousands of fishermen and women who live near or inside the marine protected areas and rely on fishing and harvesting for livelihoods and feeding their families. Fishing bans and unfair treatment . In one case, fishermen burned a ranger station in protest.

To add to the divisiveness, big commercial boats still caught fish in these areas because the protection zones were not well enforced.

A recent successful example was the creation of California’s . Local fisheries and communities, along with scientists, fishery managers, government and industry, were all brought to the table and the by most groups involved, Bennett explained.

Similarly, right now in British Columbia , and First Nations leaders are working alongside local and federal governments.

Successful conservation projects happen when both natural and social scientists are working with government, nonprofits, resource managers and local communities to come up with solutions that benefit everyone. This can take more time and resources at the outset, but Bennett and his collaborators argue that social scientists are often in a position to help make this a more efficient process.

“Ignoring the people who live in an area can be a costly mistake for conservation. This is one of those cases where an ounce of prevention can be worth more than a pound of cure,” he said. “Specialists in the social sciences can develop more creative, robust and effective solutions to environmental problems that people are going to get behind.”

, a 91̽��professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, is a co-author on the paper. Other co-authors are from the University of British Columbia, Stanford University, the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the University of Victoria, the University of Wyoming, the University of Waterloo, the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Switzerland, Oregon State University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Cornell University, Slippery Rock University, Georgia State University and World Wildlife Fund International.

This study and co-authors were funded by the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Liber Ero Foundation, Fulbright Canada, the Smith Fellowship Program, the National Science Foundation and a number of other organizations. See the paper for a complete list.

###

For more information, contact Bennett at nathan.bennett@ubc.ca.