Washington, DC — The Walton Family Foundation announced today a grant renewal to Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) to advance sustainability in nine seafood sectors, including octopus, tuna, shrimp, squid, mahi-mahi, whitefish, reduction fisheries, blue swimming crab, and snapper-grouper. SFP leverages the buying power of companies across the seafood supply chain to drive actions to rebuild depleted fisheries and reduce the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
“When you take care of fish, you’re also taking care of everything in the ocean that matters. Working for sustainable seafood at scale is one of the keys to a healthier future where people and nature can thrive together,” said Heather D’Agnes, senior program officer and Oceans initiative lead for the Foundation’s Environment Program. “The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership puts fishers and the seafood industry in leadership roles as they work to improve accountability and transparency throughout the supply chain, which are critical for healthy oceans.”
The SFP grant is for $6.7 million and supports the Foundation’s program goals, which seek to protect water resources in the face of climate change. As one of the most crucial water resources on the planet, the oceans rely on healthy, sustainable fisheries to support a robust ecosystem.
Fisheries worldwide face common challenges, including ineffective management, which is a primary cause of overfishing and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activity. SFP pioneered and continually innovates new approaches that have fundamentally changed seafood production and institutionalized sustainability with global retailers and suppliers. These include fishery improvement projects (FIPs) and Supply Chain Roundtables that bring together players within the supply chain to advocate globally for the sustainable management of marine resources.
“SFP turns 15 this year, and the Walton Family Foundation has been with us from the start,” said Jim Cannon, chief executive officer of SFP. “The Foundation’s funding has been critical to help SFP translate retailer commitments on sustainable seafood into tangible improvements in specific fisheries around the world. We’re grateful for their support and their continued leadership to protect the oceans and the livelihoods of fishers and their communities.”
In recent years, SFP created the goal to move 75 percent (Target 75) of the global production of crucial seafood sectors to sustainable (Marine Stewardship Council [MSC] certified or equivalent) or improving under a credible fishery improvement project and making adequate progress. This allows SFP to achieve improvements in seafood production quickly and at scale because industry and nonprofit organization partners have broadly embraced this approach.
SFP is now undertaking new global initiatives to address the challenges that improvement efforts have not yet resolved, including controlling IUU fishing, protecting ocean wildlife in fisheries, and effective management of small-scale fisheries and aquaculture.