The industry also has multiple negative impacts and there is an increasing realization that human rights cannot be ignored any longer by the industry.
SAMUDRA News Alerts
20 April 2020,
The Roundtable on salmon farming and human rights, organized by the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights, The Institute for Human Rights and Business, and The Danish Institute for Human Rights, on 6 December 2019 at Bergen, Norway, was held in light of the urgent need to have a stronger focus on human-rights issues in the salmon farming and aquaculture feed industries globally.
While, in the past, some attention has been paid to environmental impacts of the industry, as well as some social- and governance-related issues, not enough attention has been paid to human rights. Therefore, three human-rights organizations with extensive experience in human rights and business, including working with businesses — the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights, The Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) and The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) — gathered more than 25 stakeholders, including companies from the salmon farming and aquaculture feed industries and financial organizations, to discuss this topic in Bergen, given the significance of the aquaculture industry to Norway.
The day started with presentations by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industries and Fisheries, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and a representative of The Norwegian Seafood Federation which gave a general overview of the situation in Norway and actors at the international level, demonstrating the importance of human rights in this industry. These were followed by presentations from the various salmon farming and aquaculture feed companies and financial actors in the room.
Background
Norway is the second-largest seafood exporter in the world. In light of discussions regarding the development of mandatory human-rights due diligence legislation for Norwegian companies, there is growing momentum to put human rights higher on the agenda also for the Norwegian salmon farming industry. From a State perspective, human rights are of high priority; they are a part of the Norwegian Constitution and are core principles in important decision-making processes, including promoting the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, addressing the challenges in the seafood industry is a high priority at the national and international levels, for example, through collaborations with Interpol and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to address the issue of illegal fishing.
There is an increasing number of frameworks and initiatives that push for companies globally to respect human rights. The globally authoritative framework is the UNGPs, which was endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 and outlines what the responsibility is for companies to respect human rights. Companies in all industries, small or big, should practise human-rights due diligence, a multi-step process that allows companies to: (1) assess their negative human-rights impacts; (2) integrate policies and act on these findings; (3) track and monitor effectiveness; and (4) communicate and report on this. Companies should also engage with internal and external stakeholders and provide access to remedy.
Other relevant development aims include the SDGs, to which many companies are committed to contributing. Research has indicated that more than 90 per cent of all goals and targets of the SDGs are grounded in international human rights. Therefore, if companies respect human rights, this is the best way to contribute to the realization of the SDGs. Specific to the seafood industry, various initiatives are underway to raise the bar in terms of the industry’s social practices. The FAO started developing guidance for fisheries and aquaculture companies on what socially responsible business conduct entails through the FAO Guidance on Socially Responsible Fish Value Chains. The World Benchmarking Alliance’s Seafood Stewardship Index is benchmarking the world’s largest seafood companies on sustainability issues, including on social and human-rights themes. Salmon farming companies are also engaged in sector-level initiatives that address sustainability issues, including human rights, s uch as the Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBoS) initiative or the Global Salmon Initiative. One campaign which pushes retailers of seafood to take their responsibility is Oxfam’s Behind the Barcodes campaign, which examines the policies and practices of some of the biggest supermarkets around the world and pushes them to have a closer look at the social practices behind their products, including seafood . All these developments demonstrate that human rights can no longer be overlooked by the fisheries and aquaculture industry, including by salmon farming companies.
In conclusion:
First, it is important to note that the salmon farming industry can have a positive impact on the realization of human rights, in terms of access to food and nutrition, improved livelihoods and job creation. However, the industry also has multiple negative impacts and there is an increasing realization that human rights cannot be ignored any longer by the industry. Many of the Norwegian salmon farming and aquaculture feed companies have committed to respecting human rights, either through public commitment to the UNGPs and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises or through their involvement in various sectoral, or multi-stakeholder, initiatives which have a sustainability or social focus. The companies in the industry are increasingly transparent about the human-rights issues and challenges in the industry, but what they still lack is access to practical tools and resources tailored to the salmon farming industry as we ll as reliable data to assess and address their main human-rights risks. Companies in the industry rely on audits to assess impacts, which, judging from experience from many other industry sectors, is very likely not sufficient.
The Roundtable also reinforced that human-rights and labour-rights issues do not only occur in the global South but are also prevalent in countries such as Norway, the United States and Canada, and should, therefore, be more proactively addressed in these contexts. In the final session, which focused on the role of financial actors, it became evident that financiers have an important role to play in pushing the industry to act more responsibly when it comes to human-rights impacts; they need to practise due diligence and collaborate to ensure that the companies they finance act responsibly. But which other actors can have an influence on the industry; what are the levers for change in the industry? It was pointed out that retailers and consumer groups have an important role to play in changing the behaviour of all actors along the seafood value chains, given the increasing drive towards more robust human-rights due diligence, transparency and reporting.
Next steps
The participants of the Roundtable valued the discussions on human rights and expressed interest in continued dialogue on human rights in the salmon farming industry. As potential next steps, the participants and organizers discussed various ideas for follow-up, including:
• Sector-specific tools and resources to assess human-rights risks and impacts;
• Training and awareness raising on human rights in the salmon farming and aquaculture feed industries;
• Possible joint human-rights studies or impact assessments in common segments of the industry’s supply chain or common countries where the companies operate;
• Future roundtables to continue to discuss specific human-rights topics or a focus on specific countries, i.e. labour-rights issues in the salmon farming industry, indigenous peoples’ rights in the salmon farming industry, climate justice and the salmon farming and aquaculture feed industry, or human-rights impacts of the industry in specific country contexts, such as Chile, Canada or Scotland.