Considering Social Sustainability in Eco-Certification for Small-Scale Fishing—Why and How?

This paper reflects on the effects of eco-certification on small-scale fisheries and the possibilities for including social sustainability considerations in fisheries certification schemes for small-scale fisheries. The paper reviews existing eco-certification schemes and presents empirical data on Danish small-scale fisheries and a new Danish certification scheme. Our findings suggest the universalism most eco-certification schemes build on needs to be critically examined and that the wage worker-centrism that characterizes most work on social sustainability indicators is not universally applicable in all fisheries. Social sustainability criteria need to be continually revised to take sociocultural contexts into account and avoid the unintentional exclusion of certain segments.