TOKYO 2020 Olympics
The Global Seafood Ratings Alliance applauds efforts by past Olympic Games to serve seafood from sustainable sources. Looking ahead at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan, the GSRA is concerned with the current seafood procurement policy. We believe the Olympic Games present a unique opportunity for Japan to add a strong sustainability tenet to its seafood tradition. To this end, the GSRA sent a letter to His Serene Highness The Sovereign Prince Albert II, Chair of the IOC Sustainability and Legacy Commission, and Ms. Hashimoto Seiko, Minister for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, calling for a stronger sustainable seafood policy and suggesting amendments to the existing seafood sourcing code for the games.
jANUARY 2020
Aligning the Alliance – Monterey, CA
Members of the Global Seafood Ratings Alliance provide public-facing seafood sustainability ratings and information that aims to influence regional demand for sustainable seafood and induce an industry shift towards more ocean friendly fishing and aquaculture. Member programs offer a diversity of approaches to assessing seafood production’s impacts on species, habitats, ecosystems and beyond. While recognizing different regional contexts, priorities, and constraints; the GSRA members are working to define core elements that are essential to assessing the sustainability of wild caught and farmed seafood. Once developed, integrating these common shared elements into members’ assessment methodologies will strengthen these methodologies and increase consistency between members’ ratings so that they can be shared with increased confidence.
july 2018
Announcing the Alliance – Barcelona, Spain
In late July, the GSRA presented at the world’s premier conference on seafood sustainability, the SeaWeb Seafood Summit held in Barcelona, Spain. The panel was the first announcement of the GSRA to the international sustainable seafood movement and focused on how we are working collaboratively to tackle multi-national sustainable seafood challenges and advance global demand for sustainable products. A link to the more detailed abstract is located here.
Directly after the Summit, the GSRA convened the an important workshop which focused on identifying and ratifying the core sustainability elements for fisheries and aquaculture that should be included in the standards of all GSRA members. Initially, these core elements will be purely categorical – the key components of sustainability that must be considered when evaluating the environmental performance of wild and farmed seafood. Ultimately, performance thresholds for each element will be agreed upon along with process requirements for conducting these evaluations.
The adoption of these core elements allows organizations within the GSRA to refer their business partners to other GSRA members in the event that a business is interested in sustainability information about a product not covered by their partner’s suite of ratings. These are the first steps in working towards the challenging task of collectively developing a common methodology – one sustainability standard that is adopted by all member organizations so that seafood, regardless of origin or destination, is evaluated and scored identically.
September 2017
Rethinking the Roadmap to Sustainability
On September 11th and 12th, the Global Seafood Ratings Alliance reconvened at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to discuss the progress made to date and to redefine the goals for the next five years.
The new priority work areas are different than the 4 key areas of collaboration that are described in the 2016 Annual Alliance Meeting Summary below. Rather than continuing to work in smaller, focused work groups on things like consumer outreach efforts or species-specific initiatives, the GSRA will spend the next five years working collectively on three key efforts:
Short-term: Develop “Minimum Viable Standards” which will describe the core elements that must be included in each member organization’s evaluations of fisheries and aquaculture sustainability.
Long-term: Develop a “Global Seafood Sustainability Standard” which will be a single standard that will be used by member organizations to evaluate the environmental and social impacts of seafood around the world. This will be a monumental task but will be highly impactful as it will establish a consistent, rigorous evaluation framework for sustainable seafood.
On-going: Collective Action will continue to be a core component of the GSRA. GSRA members will use their collective influence to focus attention on priority species, engage with businesses to ensure responsible seafood sourcing policies, and continue to elevate awareness of sustainable seafood issues at key global events.
October 2016
Forming the Alliance
On October 6th and 7th, representatives from 12 of the world’s prominent seafood rating organizations met in at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California and signed a memorandum of understanding which marked the official formation of the Global Seafood Ratings Alliance (GSRA).
The goals of the GSRA are simple:
1. Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Seafood Rating Organizations (SROs)
2. Increase the standing and leverage of SROs within their spheres of influence and globally
To these ends, the Alliance will provide a forum for exchange of information between members, improve inter-program collaboration and coordination, provide support for member organizations as the Alliance works on collective efforts to improve wild-caught and aquaculture seafood sustainability, and harmonize affiliated NGOs’ business- and consumer-focused engagement strategies.
Global Seafood Ratings Alliance 