September 2012

The Fishing and Living program is now working with WWF Vietnam, the MSC, and industry representatives including major producers in Vietnam as part of a program to help move Tuna fisheries in the central Vietnam provinces of Phu Yen, Khanh Do and Binh Dinh toward achieving MSC Certification.

The initial stakeholder meeting held on September 12th, 2012 in Nha Trangwhich was convened to gain overall support for establishing a multi-stakeholder Fisheries Improvement Project designed to support the fishery entering the MSC process. According to Dung Tran, who represented the Vietnam Fishing and Living program, the meeting was a strong success because of the broad participation which included not only Tuna companies and NGO’s but VASEP (the Vietnam Assoc. of Exporters and Producers), VINATUNA and the provincial heads of the Vietnam Fisheries Ministry. The meeting participants agreed unanimously to move to a undertake a pre-assessment, with WWF and VINATUNA to act as co-clients for this process. Funding for the pre-assessment was provided by the MSC and WWF.

A series of meetings were conducted on November 27th, 2012 as part of the MSC pre-assessment representing another major step forward in organizing the government and industry associations and companies to collaborate as part of the Fisheries Improvement Program. The final report on the pre-assessment will be completed in early 2013. It is anticipated a meeting to formally instate the FIP will take place in April of 2013 where the results of the pre-assessment as well as an Action Plan for implementing the FIP will be agreed among the stakeholders. Dung Tran who met with the pre-assessment teams was keen to add that “as while we continue to work with industry to improve this fishery, as soon as the FIP is in place we will put our full efforts into working with our supply chain partners to implement the recommendations as we have done in Indonesia”.