Co-creating sustainable seafood solutions with Mr.Goodfish3.0: Amplifying local voices and best practices across Europe to protect our oceans

While scientific evidence emphasises the urgent need for transitioning toward more sustainable practices of fishing, production, and consumption of seafood, there is a risk that local actors can be either overwhelmed by or unaware of these findings, relevant legislations and other supportive measures that can foster forward thinking and sustainable production based on scientific knowledge. The seafood value chain, spanning from the ocean to the plate, remains fragmented, often resulting in solutions that lack a systemic approach and may solve one issue while creating another across the chain and on a global level. Moreover, the lack of digestible information and opportunities to voice lived experiences among seafood value chain actors can lead to disengagement or even resistance toward sustainable fishing, production practices, and everyday consumption changes.  

This presentation discusses the co-creation framework within the EU-funded Mr.Goodfish3.0 (MGF3.0) project and highlights how the project aims to incorporate local voices into the creation of long-term solutions for local value chains that affect marine biodiversity of Atlantic, North Sea and Barents Sea (Arctic) basins. The presentation will share results from the first year of the MGF3.0 3-year project and exemplify how inclusive, bottom-up actions can contribute to valuing local knowledge systems, preserving the oceans’ ecosystems and resources for coming generations. 

MGF3.0 focuses on three European pilot sites, Norway, France, and Cyprus, and plans to replicate its solutions in Bulgaria and Poland, to align local practices with global sustainability development goals 12, 14 and 17. The project’s co-creation framework was developed to actively engage participants and build their knowledge of sustainability issues, helping to establish lasting awareness and support for sustainable practices. The co-creation framework is a dynamic methodology that evolves and adapts to local cultural, economic, and ecological contexts. Moreover, the framework sets up collaborations between local stakeholders and actors to identify problems, co-design solutions, and test prototypes. The presentation will highlight how interviews, surveys, co-creation workshops, sustainability workshops, pre-existing knowledge systems and public awareness events were used to design and operationalise the framework and how this approach has fostered Ocean literacy, shared responsibility and community involvement.