 Hi and welcome folks, my name is Juno Fitzpatrick and I am the Human Rights and Social Responsibility Program Manager for Conservation International's Global Fisheries and Aquaculture Program. Thank you so much to Arizona State University and the United Nations Global Compact Conference for the opportunity to share CI's approach to addressing human rights abuses within the seafood sector. So I'm going to kick off this presentation by sharing my screen, there we go. So Conservation International protects biodiversity and improves the well-being of ocean-dependent communities by implementing sustainable fisheries and aquaculture solutions built on partnerships and investments from ocean to plate. We have a global reach, we work in 36 sites across 24 countries impacting 1.5 billion hectares of ocean and coasts and that's around 21,000 people. And this is where we work, the dark blue areas depict the geographies where our global fisheries and aquaculture program is. So today only 25% of global seafood production is currently certified as sustainable or assessed for their sustainability status. CI is working towards the planetary need that 75% of seafood globally is produced using socially responsible and environmentally sustainable methods by 2030. CI's contribution is to focus on 20 critical geographies where we have partnerships, programs and a driving impact and these are the geographies that we saw in the previous map. So we combine three elements that when implemented together can unleash conservation impact. So firstly building community capacity, producers need to be prepared to support food security and participate sustainably in the Blue Revolution. We build capacity with fishes, aquaculture operators and communities to transition the sector to sustainable practices. Working on our strengthened field demonstrations and relationships on the ground and in the water. Secondly, unleashing the power of markets and private capital to drive impact requires a new suite of conservation finance tools. Working with investors and innovators, we're developing conservation finance approaches to align markets and sustainable enterprises. And finally, nothing replaces the need for effective management systems that allow communities, enterprises and markets to function efficiently. We implement policy reforms that incentivize sustainable production practices and protect the critical ecosystems that support economic activity. And this is all based on a strong foundation of science and knowledge. So within our global fisheries and aquaculture program, our strategy is supported by three focal areas, coastal community fisheries, sustainable tuna initiatives and responsible aquaculture. And we have two cross-cutting initiatives, social responsibility or human rights and ocean finance. So our work in human rights, human well-being is applied in our three focal areas and works in concert with our focus on combating illegal unreported and unregulated fishing and the conservation of marine biodiversity. And the link to our team's approach is our integration and elevation of human rights and human well-being into the sustainability discourse. So let's think a little bit about the unmet need. The ocean is the biggest food system on our planet. Three out of seven people depend on the ocean as their primary source of protein and the seafood sector employs millions. The decades scientists, managers, conservationists and funders have been concerned with the negative human impacts on our marine environment but have largely ignored the social side of the equation and this has had dire consequences for human well-being. Media revelations about slavery and human rights abuses have placed social issues at the forefront of a sector that has spent decades working to improve environmental sustainability. There are now around 40 million victims of modern slavery, of whom 25 million are in forced labor situations and 60 million of those are in the private sector, half of whom are trapped in debt bondage. Social performance within the seafood sector is among the worst production sectors on the planet and now with 200 million people around the world depending directly or indirectly on this industry for employment, it is crucial for the seafood sector to catch up. Recent analysis and research has shown a clear link between the prevalence of human rights abuses in global fisheries and harmful fishing or poor environmental performance. Violations of human and labor rights and illegal unreported and unregulated fishing in seafood supply chains has drawn attention from governments, NGO and the public and put pressure on companies to take action. So let's break down this problem a little bit. Depleted stocks drive increased fishing effort, fishing farther, deeper and longer and thereby costs. This increases the demand for cheap labor to offset this loss in profit. To compensate for the higher costs, vessel owners often turn to trafficking networks, illegal trafficking networks to supply cheap labor at the expense of vulnerable populations and these are often migrant workers. So we find that it's the same factors that are enabling illegal harvesting and overfishing that also drive human rights abuses in the sector. And this includes global fisheries over capitalization subsidies that offset rising operational costs that would otherwise encourage a reduction in fishing capacity. As shipment can facilitate both illegal fishing as well as trafficking, flags of convenience that help vessels that illegally that fish illegally and engage in human trafficking to escape detection and avoid legal consequences, opaque supply chains that hide exploitative activities, rising consumer demands for cheap seafood, distant water fishing, ineffective fisheries management and governance practices and regulatory gaps that inhibit minimum international labor protections for fishery workers. So many countries, including the US have not signed on to the relevant treaties to ensure the legality and the safety of fishing operations. So how do we respond? Conservation International is driving best practice in environmental and social sustainability through innovative tools at scale. Together with Arizona State University, we recognize the importance of balancing conservation outcomes with human wellbeing for effective and just fisheries reform. Our social responsibility program is situated within this context. Our programmatic goal here is to drive the uptake and implementation of social responsibility initiatives among private sector, NGO and government partners in order to improve social performance. We deliver on this through the implementation of effective tools and policies to protect workers and fishers, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. So this means that from our on the water field projects to international policy negotiations, we ensure the rights of people, indigenous peoples, rural communities, men and women are respected and in collaboration with business and human rights partners, we embed social improvements into critical marine and coastal fisheries. So we as a community of practice need to ensure that seafood is produced in a way that doesn't compromise the basic rights of people and supports their collective wellbeing. So back in 2016, a coalition of experts and organizations developed a shared, comprehensive definition of social responsibility. And this is referred to as the Monterey framework. A commitment to the three pillars of the Monterey framework is a commitment to protecting human rights, dignity and access to resources, ensuring equality and equitable opportunity to benefit and improving food, nutrition and livelihood security. A pledge to the Monterey framework is a commitment to this comprehensive set of existing law policy and guidance frameworks that support the three principles of socially responsible seafood. This encompasses the UN's Declaration on Human Rights, the ILO fundamental conventions and the ILO working fishing convention. All five types of human rights recognized by the UN Declaration on Human Rights are reflected in the Monterey framework. This is civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. So in order to action the Monterey framework, we recommend in line with the UN guiding principles on human rights for companies to undertake human rights due diligence. So according to the UN guiding principles, human rights due diligence is an ongoing risk management process in order to prevent, identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how a company addresses its adverse human rights impacts. And the four key steps of this process are assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting on findings, tracking responses and communicating how impacts are addressed. So how do we do this within a fisheries context? CI and partners co-developed the social responsibility assessment tool for the seafood sector. It's a risk assessment tool for conducting human rights due diligence in seafood supply chains. It excels in a wide range of contexts from small community-orientated fisheries to industrial fleets and throughout the supply chain. So for example, in Ecuador, we piloted this innovative human rights due diligence tool for the seafood sector in the OPEGAC Eastern Pacific Persane Fishery. The tool measures alignment with the Monterey framework, integrates all relevant international labour organization conventions and international human rights protocols, encompassing the treatment of fishermen, safety practices, access to food and first aid, among other key rights and needs. And this was the first time human rights due diligence was performed in a fishery improvement project of this size and scale. So from Costa Rica to South Africa, we are piloting the social responsibility assessment tool among small-scale actors in the seafood sector. At CI, we recognise that whilst recent media revelations have brought increased attention to social issues in seafood, resulting social protections and standards have a disproportionate focus on the violation of civil and political rights during the harvesting stage of offshore industrial operations. So we urgently need to bring more attention to the violations of economic, social and cultural rights or ESC rights, particularly within and across small-scale fisheries and fishing communities. So for example, when foreign fleets overfish in the exclusive economic zone of developing countries, such that fishing is a way of life or livelihood is no longer economically viable, all communities' rights to food security are undermined. Economic, social and cultural rights include rights to food, water, decent work, standard living and rights of women, children and migrants. Whilst civil and political rights violations are litigated by use of criminal, maritime and labour law, in the case of ESC or Economic, Social and Cultural Violations, it's much harder to determine who is accountable and how remediation occurs as they are perceived as systematic issues. So our coastal community fisheries programme is situated within this context. Our programmatic goal here is to achieve measurable social, economic and environmental improvements in 15 coastal community fisheries globally by 2025. And this is to ultimately contribute towards the planetary need. Our theory of change, or pathway to impact, is we drive improvements by combining good governance, community capacity and market incentives. And our two programme focal areas, or how we deliver on this, is through the development of tools and solutions for assessing and improving social, economic and environmental performance in fisheries, integrating science with stakeholder knowledge and values and through building internal and external communities of practice to drive collaboration and alignment across diverse geographies and contexts. At Conservation International, we see that business is a part of the solution. Business is both the opportunity and the responsibility to lead in this space. Thought leaders in the seafood industry self-identified solutions to social challenges intended to address human rights violations and improve livelihoods is one of the three top priorities to address in order to make progress in the next decade. To address these risks, companies are increasingly incorporating social responsibility into their sustainability goals. As they seek to protect brand reputation, improve business performance and meet regulatory pressures, companies have the opportunity to demonstrate ethical leadership. Chief among these are de-risking and diversifying investment opportunities, reducing risk of supply chain disruptions, litigation and reputational harm and aligning with and meeting global social responsibility standards and involving consumer demands and finally ensuring the continuity of seafood production to meet global food security into the future. So there's a sense of urgency here. COVID-related relaxation of human observer requirements, reductions in at sea enforcement capacity and increased rates of transshipment may likely exacerbate this positive feedback loop between harmful fishing and the exploitation of people with dire consequences for workers at sea. This means they're working conditions, occupational health and safety. And for coastal communities or small-scale fisheries, vulnerable groups such as women, children, indigenous people and migrant workers are experiencing COVID impacts disproportionately. So in addition to these structural inequalities, COVID interacts with existing chronic and acute stresses to increase vulnerability of coastal communities to food and livelihood security. Collectively these factors drive social instability, poverty and resource decline. So our community of practice is at a critical junction to implement tools to protect fishers, workers and communities, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and work in collaboration with business and human rights partners to embed social improvements for de-risking supply chains. If you would like to connect on CI's Human Rights Programme within our Global Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, please contact me at jfitspatrick at conservation.org. Thanks again to ASU and to UNGC.