Target 14.4: End overfishing and illegal fishing
By 2020, effectively regulate harvesting and end overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices and implement science-based management plans, in order to restore fish stocks in the shortest time feasible, at least to levels that can produce maximum sustainable yield as determined by their biological characteristics
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing are carried out by industrial fleets and laundered through listed seafood processors and retailers. Pew reports that about 38 percent of fish stocks worldwide were fished beyond sustainable levels in 2021, the most recent year with reliable data. Investor engagement has already changed conduct. FAIRR-coordinated investors engaged Thai Union on traceability, and the company committed to sourcing 100 percent of wild-caught seafood from sustainably managed or improving fisheries by 2030. It also requires its tuna to be traceable back to the vessel that caught it and secured a $150 million blue loan, borrowing earmarked for ocean sustainability work, in May 2025. On the political side, InfluenceMap documents the National Fisheries Institute and Europeche lobbying against marine protection and bottom-trawling limits. Governments must still set and enforce science-based catch limits, so owners supply a necessary input and remove a documented obstacle, but cannot deliver the outcome alone.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates a collaborative investor engagement asking seven of the largest global seafood companies to commit to full-chain, digital and interoperable traceability systems and to disclose progress, with 50 investors holding US$16.9 trillion signed up for Phase 2.
2 campaigns on record
Adopt leading traceability standards such as those of the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability and strengthen supply-chain transparency and oversight.
Result: Four companies now have robust traceability commitments, up from two in Phase 1; Maruha Nichiro and Mitsubishi disclosed new commitments in 2025, and Thai Union and Mitsubishi explicitly reference the GDST standard.
No engaged company yet discloses a comprehensive implementation strategy and milestones; Phase 3 of the engagement runs in 2026/27.
Seafood Traceability Engagement: Phase 2 Progress Report, FAIRR Initiative, 2026-02
Acknowledge the role of traceability in mitigating environmental and social risk, set a time-bound commitment and strategy to implement full-chain digital and interoperable traceability, and disclose progress.
Result: Only two of the seven companies assessed, Thai Union and Charoen Pokphand Foods, had relatively strong traceability commitments at the end of Phase 1 (2023/24).
Seafood Traceability Engagement: Phase 1 Progress Report, FAIRR Initiative, 2024-12
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.