26 October 2010: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released a Technical Paper titled “Review of ecolabelling schemes for fish and fishery products from capture fisheries,” which summarizes the standards, requirements and practices for well-managed fisheries.

The paper highlights that, in small-scale and developing country fisheries, the cost of monitoring, assessment and management often can be out of proportion to the value of the fishery and/or beyond the human and infrastructure capacity needed for management. In this light, it considers the need for the development, testing and use of suitable proxies, empirical indicators and risk-based assessment methods. The paper further discusses the enhancement of fisheries in the context of ecolabelling and emphasizes the need to distinguish among wild capture fisheries, enhanced fisheries and aquaculture. The review concludes with suggested minimum substantive requirements for FAO guidelines on ecolabelling of capture fisheries. [The Technical Paper]