***DOWNLOAD THE JOINT INDUSTRY STATEMENT ON BBNJ HERE***

The Sustainable Seafood Coalition is proud to be hosting an official side event at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon on 28th June 2022. The Secretariat will present a joint industry position statement on Marine Biodiversity of areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). This statement has been signed by the SSC, the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) and the Hong Kong Sustainable Seafood Coalition (HKSSC). This is the first time the seafood supply chain has taken an aligned public stance on the High Seas Treaty.

UPDATE: We are pleased to announce that H.E. Mrs. Margo Deiye, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary will be speaking at the event. Mrs. Deiye is the Permanent Representative of Nauru to the United Nations.

Event Details

If you’ll be in Lisbon for the UN Ocean Conference, please come and join us from 17:45 – 18:45 CET at the Ocean Basecamp, Passeio do Adamastor, Edifício Nau, 1990-007 Lisboa.

Link to Google Maps location here.

Stay tuned for more announcements on meeting format and speakers.

About the BBNJ position statement

For the original announcement of the BBNJ position statement, read our launch article here. You can also read the position statement itself here.

Collectively this position is supported by more than 85 seafood companies including Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Ahold Delhaize, Metro, Princes, Pacifical, LienThai and Fortune International. They have collectively recognised commercial fisheries impacts as the largest direct driver of biodiversity decline in the high seas, and call for transformative change to address the climate and biodiversity crises.

Competitors working together and taking ownership of social and environmental impacts makes it possible to achieve real, transformative change that no single business or platform could achieve alone.

Why are we hosting an event?

As buyers of seafood, the businesses we represent have recognised that a robust High Seas Treaty can provide an important part of the solution to ecosystem degradation and biodiversity decline in the high seas. Recognising that individual business voices can struggle to have an impact, we have entered into a pre-competitive partnership in order to be heard. Our respective initiatives have shared objectives with regard to BBNJ and have worked together in order to align our asks.

A side event at the UN Ocean Conference offers the opportunity to make more stakeholders – in policy and in industry – aware of the asks being made by seafood buyers around the world. The asks set out in our position statement are directly aligned with Goal 14. These include:

• An ambitious treaty capable of complementing the conservation and management measures of regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs).
• Recognition that coastal and island states stand to bear the brunt of the negative impacts of pressure on the high seas – often whilst unable to exploit the high seas themselves.
• An ecosystem approach to be taken in policy-making in all relevant divisions of Government and processes
• Ensuring a balance between conservation and sustainable use of marine biological resources is achieved.

The event will focus on the reasons why the protection of biodiversity in the high seas matters to seafood businesses. It will highlight the work of industry stakeholders who are already calling for a robust treaty, and provide a platform for anticipated new partners to announce their support. The event will close with a clear call to action: an invitation for seafood businesses in all geographies and markets to sign the position statement and join our advocacy campaign for a robust High Seas Treaty.

 

About the event organisers

The SSC is a pre-competitive collaboration platform of forty-five seafood businesses working to harmonize sourcing and labelling practices throughout their supply chains. The GTA is an independent group of 42 retailers and tuna supply chain companies who are committed to achieving more transparent, socially responsible, and environmentally sustainable tuna fisheries. The HKSSC is an industry-led coalition, comprising of members from Hong Kong’s seafood industry and the wider business community. Its vision is for all seafood imported into Hong Kong to be legal, traceable and biologically sustainable