Kartlegging av konsekvenser ved bortfall av MSC-sertifikat Faglig sluttrapport

The loss of MSC certification for parts of the cod and haddock fisheries, and the entire NVG herring fishery, provided a unique opportunity to study the significance of sustainability certification for the Norwegian fishing industry. The results show that certification is important for cod in certain market regions where we find a significant price premium. Furthermore, we found that the high-value product haddock loins achieve a significant price premium with MSC certification in the export market. This is interesting because this premium – provided it is shared upstream with producers and fishermen – can contribute to increased focus on high-value products in fillet production and thus also increased demand for high raw material quality from the catch sector required for such production. For NVG herring, the analyses are limited to the export sector, but we find no price premium for MSC certification in the export market. Overall, these results show that there are price premiums for MSC certification in some export markets for some species and some products. But for significant quantities of fish (all NVG herring,haddock fillet products (except loins), whole gutted haddock with and without head, and cod to Eastern Europe) we find no price premium for MSC certification in the export market. The results for cod also show that price premiums are shared with fish buyers/producers, but also that these premiums, with the exception of fillet producers, are not further shared with the catch sector. This suggests that the main idea of MSC’s market-based sustainability certification – that consumer demand should lead to price premiums that provide incentives for more sustainable management and fishing practices – does not hold. In the long run, this could be problematic for MSC because they risk losing support from the catch sector that covers the certification costs.