Abstract
BackgroundVoluntary sustainability standards and eco-labels are market-based mechanisms used to encourage producers and consumers toward environmental sustainability. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is one such program which aims to improve the state of the world’s oceans and promote a sustainable seafood market. Now in its 21st year, with approximately 14% of global fisheries landings certified, there is growing evidence of the program’s impacts (direct and indirect) on factors from fisheries management and consumer awareness to coastal communities’ livelihoods and international law. To better understand the program as a whole, the proposed systematic map will collate and describe published research on the environmental, social and economic effects of the MSC program, and indicate the prevalence of disciplines or topics and study designs in this literature. Areas considered of greater interest, knowledge gaps, and future research priorities will be identified.MethodsThis systematic map protocol describes how research regarding the MSC will be searched, identified and described. All research on the MSC and its effects (direct and indirect) will be included. The review is not limited to effects on certified fisheries but will include those on supply chain companies, socio-economics of coastal communities, governments, biological populations and ecosystems, NGOs and other stakeholders impacted by or potentially influenced by the MSC. The search scope includes studies from MSC’s foundation in 1997 to the present. To identify studies, pre-determined inclusion and exclusion criteria will be used at the title, abstract and full text levels. In addition to the use of bibliographic databases and internet search engines, the authors will call for and search for grey-literature. The final systematic map will be presented in a descriptive report detailing the focus, extent, and occurrence of research on the MSC’s impacts, taking special care to map the disciplines focused on the programme and the study design of research.
Highlights
Voluntary sustainability standards and eco-labels are market-based mechanisms used to encourage producers and consumers toward environmental sustainability
Increasing numbers of certified fisheries, coupled with greater consumer awareness may incentivise further fisheries that are operating below the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard to make sustainable changes ‘on the water’ in line with the organisation’s principles
The potential changes described in the theory of change (ToC) and their outcomes have been described in published literature
Summary
Searching for articles The articles to be screened for the systematic map will be found using the following Boolean string:. For a detailed overview of the labels, descriptions, input methods and rationales for the data-extraction form (including screen shots of the Colandr form) see Additional file 2: Data extraction sheet This extraction form has been piloted using the initial scoping exercise test searches performed using web of science (01/06/2018) that recovered 162 articles. Figures describing the outcomes for each of the secondary questions will be included (e.g. a bar graph showing the number of studies per country or number of studies per certified species) This will all be presented in a systematic map that will include this as well as the full methodology undertaken and links (via the additional supporting files) to a full database of all included studies with their meta-data.
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