Making the first move generally takes courage but is always vital to drive systemic change. At IPNLF we recognise our role as changemakers in the seafood and fishing industry and dare to take the next step in new initiatives. One of our recent, collaborative endeavours – one which we are excited to take forward – is our role in the establishment of the First Movers Forum and its recent online launch. The First Movers primary goal is to improve and promote innovative solutions for Electronic Monitoring (EM) and Electronic Catch-Documentation and Traceability (eCDT) among Indonesian fisheries through the widespread implementation of the latest technology and through commercializing these solutions with stakeholders in the seafood and fishing industry.
Indonesia’s tuna fisheries are complex to say the least. They cover a range of gear types, most of which are traditional and small-scale fishing methods, across a vast archipelago, which operate at various scales across a very long, disaggregated supply chain. This means that they require unique and practical solutions for fishery monitoring and traceability technology which deliver on government and market objectives.
IPNLF are long-standing supporters of these fisheries and, together with Asosiasi Perikanan Pole and Line dan Handline Indonesia (AP2HI) and the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF), have been working with companies and other partners throughout the tuna supply chain to develop new technologies in the EM and eCDT space.
Our collaboration aims to:
Our key initiatives in the past have sought to improve traceability, fisheries monitoring, and scientific fishery data collection. These have been accompanied by a rapid growth in new EM and eCDT technologies that can support and streamline the achievement of government and market objectives, especially as they are increasingly affordable and able to be commercialized to fulfil an operational demand or even wellbeing component in the fishery; we expect these fit-for-purpose solutions to be able to scale and be implemented throughout our fisheries in the future.
With that in mind, Yayasan IPNLF Indonesia has launched our latest initiative, the ‘First Mover Forum’ in collaboration with AP2HI and MMAF, to harmonize development in the EM and eCDT space with a webinar last week that was attended by an incredible 150 fishery representatives, the majority of which from the private sector. The forum is a voluntary cross-sectoral group which represents government, industry, markets, NGOs and tech firms. Members fall into 3 categories; market members who can be either market end or customer facing, advisory members which include NGOs and technology experts, groups or associations and finally, executive members who are those working in government, seafood processing or as vessel owners. Members share a common vision to champion innovative solutions in electronic catch documentation and traceability (eCDT) as well as in electronic monitoring (EM). They are tasked to achieve maximum alignment between government and private sector objectives within Indonesian one-by-one tuna fisheries and supply chains.
As members of the group, organisations and individuals commit to regular and special intersessional meetings that support the groups objectives in implementing pilot programs, collaboratively developing best and common practices,harmonizing development, incentivising scalability, and promoting the in-country eCDT and EM work. The group will also develop information content on EM and eCDT on a regular basis, which will be shared to fishery stakeholders in order to help build capacity. Collaboration is at the core of the group and therefore other commitments involve sharing ideas, lessons learned and supporting implementation. The forum is designed to facilitate discussions across a very wide range of stakeholders and we aim to use it to its full potential.
We believe collaboration amongst fishery stakeholders is essential to advance technological development in small-scale tuna fisheries, and a vital component of improving sustainable fisheries management that brings Indonesian tuna to the global marketplace now and into the future. Simultaneously, we are seeing fishery technologies develop and evolve at a phenomenal pace while approaching a scale of mass affordability.
IPNLF’s South-east Asia Director, Jeremy Crawford, introduced the launch by saying “This is our time to harness these new technologies and our spirit for development and innovation and we hope the new forum will make the most of the new opportunities open to us while helping to drive change among small-scale, low-impact Indonesian fisheries. We see eCDT and EM technologies as having great potential for increasing operational efficiency, improving fishery data and reducing operational costs, which will enable them to scale in the future. Through improving the value offering of Indonesian tuna fisheries by implementing these technologies, we can help promote our fisheries around the world.”
The next First Movers Forum will convene by the end of 2021.
For more information or to engage with the First Movers Forum, please contact
Jeremy Crawford
IPNLF South-east Asia Director
jeremy.crawford@ipnlf.org