Växjö Declaration: Sustainable fishing guarantees food supplies

At its meeting of 26 June, the Nordic Council of Ministers for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Agriculture, Food and Forestry (MR-FJLS)(1) discussed how to promote sustainable fisheries. If the fisheries industry is to be sustainable in an era of climate change, the way in which it is managed must be reformed to reflect the new reality. The Nordic Region is particularly susceptible to climate change, so a Nordic system of co-operation between administrators, the fisheries industry and consumers would serve as a model for dealing with its consequences.

The Nordic Council of Ministers (MR-FJLS):

welcomes consumer awareness of, and interest in, the sustainable use of fish stocks;

notes the growing consumer interest in labelling systems that promote sustainable fishing;

recognises the importance of consumers’ rights to affect demand for fish by altering their purchasing behaviour;

welcomes regional and local voluntary initiatives by the Nordic fisheries industry to certify and label sustainable fishing;

calls upon the Nordic countries and the bodies involved in Nordic fisheries co-operation to identify synergy effects between consumer demand for information about sustainable fish and the work that the industry itself is doing on traceability in an attempt to combat illegal, unregulated and unreported fish;

believes that Nordic bodies have played an important role in the development of global guidelines for the labelling of sustainable fish under the auspices of the FAO;

notes that the Nordic fisheries industry is aware of the market demand for environmental labelling on fish,

calls upon the Nordic fishing industry to continue its work on labelling and traceability as per consumers’ wishes;

calls upon Nordic fisheries bodies to prioritise tangible issues related to this theme.

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1 MR-FJLS is one of 11 councils in the Nordic Council of Ministers which is a cooperation between the governments in Denmark, the Faore Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Åland