Who caught my fish?: Investigating the potential of traceability systems to stop labour rights violations in fisheries

Global fisheries governance faces two major sustainability challenges: how to ensure seafood products are ‘green’ and how to make them ‘ethical’. Seafood is one of the most traded commodities globally, with particularly long and difficult to trace supply chains.

Fishing vessels are also the most dangerous workplace in the world, due to storms, accidents, handling dangerous equipment on a moving boat, and worker exhaustion due to long working hours and time at sea.

While traceability systems show promise to ensure green seafood products, they are no labels or certificates to ensure decent work in the fishing sector.

Only recently has the EU passed a Mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Law (mHREDD) to shape sustainable and responsible corporate behavior, by requiring compliance with human rights standards, including labour rights, throughout global value chains.

This project will take a novel approach to investigate the potential of mHREDD law in addressing labour rights in seafood supply chains, using Vietnam as case study.

Our work will build theory and evidence on how improved working conditions of fish workers may achieve through the involvement of port-based actors, as a counterpart to the top-down policy from EU.

Consequently, we contribute to development of ‘just and sustainable economy’ by showing how law-binding of state intervention can potentially shape cooperate behaviour to reach ethical and environmental sustainability goals.