The FiTI Standard is the global default framework for transparency in national marine fisheries management.
The FiTI Standard is the outcome of extensive discussions among governments, industrial fishing companies, small-scale fishing representatives, intergovernmental organisations and civil society groups working on fisheries and marine conservation.
It defines what information should be published online by national authorities, how it can be verified, and used more effectively to inform public debate.
The implementation of the FiTI Standard is contributing to sustainable and equitable marine fisheries through data-driven and evidence-based management; promoting inclusive governance to safeguard marine ecosystems; elevating the fisheries sector’s visibility by highlighting its economic, social, and environmental contributions; stimulating market-based incentives; and strengthening the effectiveness and public reputation of national fisheries management institutions.
Transparency of Marine Fisheries Management
The FiTI Standard covers transparency requirements for 12 thematic areas of marine fisheries management:
(click on each area to learn more)
National Objectives
Goals, targets and timeframes
Legal Framework
Laws, access agreements & rules for fishing sectors
Small-Scale Fisheries
Identification & support
Vessels and Authorisations
Vessel record, licences & quotas
Catches
Landings, fishing effort & discards
Health of Fish Populations
Stock assessments, conservation measures & endangered species
Employment and Labour Standards
Formal and informal sectors & work at sea
Law Enforcement
Strategies, procedures & sanctions
Trade and Consumption
Exports, imports & food availability
Fiscal Management
Revenues, budgets & subsidies
Development Finance
Purpose, value & outcomes
Beneficial Ownership
Collection, verification & use of information
Key principles for increasing transparency and participation under the FiTI Standard
Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration
The FiTI Standard is implemented at the national level through a Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG), comprising representatives from government, business and civil society. This group meets regularly to review how national authorities are performing against the requirements of the FiTI Standard and to agree on recommendations for improvements. These recommendations are not limited to the publication of information. They can also include recommendations for national authorities to improve public outreach and participation in decision-making.
Progressive Improvements
Although the FiTI holds all countries to the same high standards, it recognises that national authorities may lack financial resources, technology, expertise or staff to fulfil the transparency requirements of the FiTI Standard. Therefore, FiTI countries are not expected to have complete data for every transparency requirement from the beginning. Instead, national authorities must disclose the information they have, and where important gaps exist, improvements over time must be demonstrated.
Transparency in the Public Domain
The FiTI Standard emphasises the need for national authorities to develop and strengthen their own systems for collecting, organising and publishing information online in a complete, accessible and understandable manner. For this, a country’s National Multi-Stakeholder Group reviews and approves annual assessments on the fisheries information in the public domain for all transparency requirements in the FiTI Standard. If needed, this group issues recommendations on how to further improve transparency and stakeholder participation in the country’s fisheries sector.
Public Awareness and Debate
The impact of the FiTI does not lie alone in the act of publishing fisheries information. It relies on how this information is used to support reforms towards better governance of the sector. The FiTI Standard offers an important means to raise awareness and appreciation of a country’s fisheries sector and to stimulate debates on how information can be used to advance democratic governance, civic engagement, and accountability in fisheries management at the national, regional and international level.
Changes to the FiTI Standard 2.0
Several factors have influenced the decision to update the FiTI Standard. After a decade since the launch of the first Standard (1.0), the landscape for transparency in fisheries has evolved significantly. New international agreements have raised the bar in terms of what information governments are expected to make public. So have stakeholder interests and demands. FiTI implementations in several countries as well as the FiTI’s TAKING STOCK transparency assessments have also produced significant learnings and improvement opportunities. The following summarises the key changes and improvements of the FiTI Standard 2.0:
It was essential to maintain continuity in the presentation of the new Standard. At the same time, it was agreed that several improvements could be made. Three changes are most important to highlight from the perspective of implementing countries:
- The names of the 12 thematic headers for the transparency requirements have been modified. This is partly due to reorganising the placement of specific requirements, but also to accommodate the removal of some requirements and the addition of others. Also, some headers were changed because they were not considered relevant to all FiTI countries, for example the thematic header on Access Agreements.
- A short preamble text now accompanies each of the 12 thematic header. This explains the relevance of the transparency requirements and clarifies key terms.
- The FiTI Standard includes now blue boxes, that are directed to National MSGs regarding additional aspects for them to consider. These are used strategically for aspects that might be unique to some countries or for optional improvements in transparency
Under the proposed FiTI Standard 2.0, FiTI implementing countries are no longer subject to continuous annual reporting cycles. Instead, countries are required to achieve compliance with the FiTI Standard within five years after commencing its implementation. Once a country reaches the status of a FiTI Compliant Country, compliance reviews, conducted by the FiTI International Secretariat, will be conducted every three years to verify that high levels of transparency have been maintained. These changes are designed to make the implementation of the FiTI less burdensome for countries. They will also ensure that those who commit to the initiative are rewarded with credible and ongoing external verification of their achievements.
The FiTI Standard 2.0 encourages countries to use existing multi-stakeholder platforms for its implementation. Previously, implementing countries were required to establish a new multi-stakeholder platform dedicated to the FiTI. However, in some countries this is unnecessary and it risks undermining existing participatory processes or duplicating efforts. Still, no matter how the National MSGs are formed, they must adhere to fundamental values: equal representation of stakeholder groups, the ability of each stakeholder group to select its own representatives, adherence to consensus-driven decision-making procedures, and the ability of participants to act without intimidation or censorship.
Also, the FiTI Standard 2.0 clearly documents the recent practice of reducing the costs of implementing the FiTI Standard by transferring the responsibility for producing annual transparency assessment from countries to the FiTI International Secretariat. A country’s National MSG is still responsible for verifying the findings of this assessment and for making recommendations on how to strengthen transparency and public participation. The new approach also supports more concise annual FiTI Reports that focus on countries’ progress in meeting the Standard and on the recommendations made by the National MSG.
Finally, countries committing to the FiTI Standard must reach the status of a FiTI Implementing country (previously referred to as a FiTI Candidate country) within 18 months.
The FiTI Standard 2.0 includes a revised list of core transparency requirements for national authorities. A careful balancing act has informed the thinking behind this. While the updated version of the Standard increases transparency demands on national authorities to keep pace with international developments, it has been approached with caution to avoid overburdening countries. The result is a revised list of transparency requirements that builds on those contained in the first Standard, but with improvements to ensure the FiTI’s relevance and impact are strengthened.
Among the most important enhancements made in the FiTI Standard 2.0 is how it responds to the question of how transparency can be made more meaningful for national policy debates. Marine fisheries are often associated with a wide range of environmental, social, economic, climate and food security goals. However, it is not always clear to the public how national authorities reconcile these objectives and avoid policy incoherence. The FiTI Standard 2.0, therefore, requires national authorities to publish succinct information on their national objectives and explain how achieving these can be measured. This information can inspire national policy debates on what the goals of fisheries management should be and the extent to which fisheries management decisions align with them. It also provides a framework for making much of the other information required by the FiTI Standard relevant for accountability.
The FiTI Standard 2.0 strengthens transparency requirements on the fiscal management of fisheries. This will ensure the public has a comprehensive understanding of how much public revenue is being generated, how it is used, and what public financial resources are allocated to fisheries management and development. Fiscal management has been a neglected area in fisheries, despite its critical importance.
The FiTI Standard 2.0 better accommodates statistical information on the non-commercial fishing sector, including its size and its contribution to catches. This reflects the substantial numbers of people engaged in non-commercial fishing and the resulting impacts on the health of fish populations and other fishing interests. Countries that do not collate detailed information on sectors such as recreational fishing are not expected to generate this information immediately. Instead, they should explain the difficulties they have in doing so and consider the feasibility of improving data over time.
Members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora are obligated to publish information about the authorisation of trade in listed marine species, as well as scientific studies that evaluate the impact this trade will have on species’ survival. This has become a key pillar in global efforts to protect threatened species, making it an appropriate addition to the FiTI Standard.
To keep pace with international developments, FiTI countries will be requested to publish information on development finance for fisheries and marine conservation, rather than on official development aid. This reflects the growing importance of development assistance from private investments and philanthropic donations, as well as the most recent international metric on aid flows known as the ‘Total Official Support for Sustainable Development’ (TOSSD). The focus of the FiTI remains only on the finance mobilised by national authorities.
Finally, there are also several transparency requirements which have been removed from the FiTI Standard 2.0 (compared to the previous version):
- Evaluations of access agreements: Apart from evaluations produced by the European Union of its access agreements with third countries, the FiTI has found that national authorities do not commission evaluations of other agreements and are unlikely to see this as a priority.
- National report on the state of the fisheries resource: Very few countries produce stand-alone reports on the status of their fisheries resources. The inclusion of this requirement was therefore considered overly burdensome on those who do not.
- Quantity of fish transhipped at sea: This requirement proved difficult for many countries to implement. The proposed Standard 2.0 removes this requirement and establishes a simpler one for data on landings in foreign ports.
- Per-vessel payment data: Although countries already implementing the FiTI have met the requirement to publish per-vessel payment data,maintaining it was considered impractical for many countries considering joining the FiTI, including those with vessel registries encompassing many thousands of vessels across multiple sectors.The new thematic header on fiscal transparency provides a more straightforward way to assess the revenues from fishing paid to national and subnational authorities.
- Expenditures on law enforcement activities: Experience has shown that this transparency requirement is difficult to assess in practice. The proposed new Standard provides greater flexibility for national authorities to publish information on fisheries management expenditures.
- Evaluations of the economic, social and food security contributions of commercial fisheries: Although advantageous for countries to have, this requirement was considered burdensome for countries that do not yet have this information.
The FiTI Standard 1.0 required national authorities to publish separate information for large-scale fisheries (LSF) and small-scale fisheries (SSF). This requirement has been removed from the Standard 2.0. One reason is that most countries do not compile fisheries statistics according to these two categories. Instead, they use other approaches that distinguish data by sector and/or gear type. The FiTI Standard 2.0 therefore affords countries greater flexibility in how they choose to publish information, while maintaining previous requirements for data disaggregation.
A feature of the first FiTI Standard was the requirement for countries to define which sectors are considered small-scale. This is increasingly relevant given multiple international initiatives that encourage preferential treatment of small-scale fisheries. After extensive consultation with experts and representatives from small-scale fishing organisations, a dedicated thematic header is included in the FiTI Standard 2.0 to publish information on efforts and activities related to small-scale fisheries, including a clear definition of the groups in their countries that are included under this term, if available.
Under the FiTI Standard 2.0, countries are no longer required to publish an annual report that contains summary information on the management of their fisheries sector. The publication of this information on government websites is sufficient. To countries which are unable to maintain or produce their own websites, the FiTI International Secretariat provides further assistance, either by supporting the country’s National MSG in publishing an interim Fisheries Information Report or by offering national authorities the utilisation of a new online Fisheries Information System (FIS).
In order to facilitate the usage and understanding of key terms used within the FiTI Standard across different countries and languages, several updates to the terminology have been introduced to the FiTI Standard 2.0, while others remain unaltered, as shown below:
| FiTI Standard 2.0 | FiTI Standard 1.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| FiTI Committed Country | ≠ | [No official term was used for countries committing to implement the FiTI Standard] |
| FiTI Implementing Country | ≠ | FiTI Candidate country |
| FiTI Compliant Country | ≠ | FiTI Compliant country |
| Coordinating Authority | ≠ | Lead Ministry |
| National Focal Point | ≠ | National Lead |
| National Secretariat | = | National Secretariat |
| National Multi-Stakeholder Group | = | National Multi-Stakeholder Group |
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