Jarno Marttila  00:30

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the TX podcast. My name is Jarno Marttila and I’m head of technology at TX, on this season on our pod, I’ll be your host for series of podcasts related topics of traceability. We have some amazing guests lined up from all over the world. They talk about the challenges around traceability wholesale them, and the role that emerging technologies have to play, such as blockchain, but first, our guest this week is Aimée Leslie from WWF Peru. Welcome, Aimée. How are you doing?

Aimée Leslie  01:01

Thanks, pleasure to be here. I’m doing well. Thanks.

Jarno Marttila  01:06

Yeah, can you tell us something about yourself and WWF Peru?

Aimée Leslie  01:12

Sure. So, I’ve been working for WWF, it’s going to be a decade this year in June, I started with the international office based out of Switzerland, until 2017 because in 2018, I took this role as director of the Marine and Wildlife Program in Peru. So, our work on traceability here really started before I joined the office, because they were looking at the issues within the fisheries system in the country, and really thought that traceability was a good tool that could help them. So, because the WWF network as such, was already working on the issue. They were able to gather information, for example, from the US office and others in terms of guidance that they could use to be able to apply in the proven context, but it wasn’t 2018 that we hired them for say, Alvarez, who started with us as an intern and at that point, we only had like, you know, our storyboard of what we wanted the possibility system of food to look like. So, it was really horsey that took this to the next level and made it an actual application that is now in use and so on. So, that’s kind of a summary of my story within WWF and a bit how our traceability work started.

Jarno Marttila  02:45

Yeah, I think we’ll come back to the traceability app in a bit, but maybe from our audience, like, everyone probably knows, like, what is WWF? Like, they know the panda logo, and they know like, I can also say like, they do something good with the nature, but homestead like more as an organization, like there’s a little bit of a rule, how does it differentiate from let’s say, WWF, Philippines or WWF International?

Aimée Leslie  03:14

So, WWF works as a network and the organization started in 1961. It was created by IUCN, so actually, the World Conservation for Nature, and it was created as a fund. That’s why the original name was World Wildlife Fund. Even though that name is still used by some offices, like the US office, and the official name now is Worldwide Fund for Nature. So, because the idea was, we don’t only focus on wildlife, but we work in broader issues as well. Something interesting there is that at some points, you might remember this World Wrestling Federation. Yeah, actually, when I say work for WWF sometimes, I’ve had people tell me, but you don’t look like a wrestler. I’m not a wrestler, exactly, but there was a lawsuit, actually, between the US office and the World Wrestling Federation. That’s where the World Wrestling Federation is now, WWE, I think that happens sometimes. So, as a network, we have about 200 offices and that’s because in some countries, there’s more than one office and there’s about 6000 staff globally and it works like a network. So, there’s a WWF International is based out of Switzerland because that’s where IUCN is based out of and you know, they’re the ones that created the WWF. So, there’s what is called program offices and national offices. So, national offices and like most of the European offices are financially independent and auto sustainable. They have their own national board of directors but collaborate with all the rest of the WWF network officers. Our office in Peru is a program office, which means we’re not financially independent, we can’t sustain ourselves, and based on the fundraising that we can do within country, so we don’t have memberships, for example. So, we work more closely with one of the two Secretariat. So, one is International, based out of Switzerland, the other is the US office. So, we work with the US office like most of the Latin American officers do. So, it’s a bit of a complex system, but the nice thing is, as you’re saying, like, because we have representation in most, if not all the countries of the world, and therefore when we’re discussing issues like we are talking with people on the ground who are working on those issues, and when you’re working on migratory species, like most of the marine species are, it’s really important. So, for to give a specific example, and the loggerhead that nests in Australia, beads of Peru. So, conservation efforts at nesting beaches in Australia weren’t being effective because there was bycatch, and fisheries in Peru. So, for us to be able to talk to the Australian office about this, you know, and exchange information on it and try to find solutions. is one of the beauties of being part of this network.

Jarno Marttila  06:40

That’s very interesting to hear. So, if somebody that point, many don’t realize that, okay, this is actually cooperation of national organizations trying to come together around and tackle these problems in some way. Also, we run into with the WWF, Philippines that when it comes to yellowfin tuna, that we’re recording information, the Tracy project, it’s exploring France or around the Philippines, but it does migrate, like most instances like to Indonesian side also like to the Pacific side.

Aimée Leslie  07:13

That’s true. I mean, there are disadvantages. Of course, sometimes it takes us a while to come to a decision because you need to consider everybody’s opinion. I, for example, used to lead our delegation that went to the International Whaling Commission, and having offices in Japan, as well as New Zealand and you know, other in Denmark and the UK, for example, meant that we had very different perspectives that had to come together. To be honest, like, I think, you know, that is the way the world works. So, ultimately, this is just a small representation where at least there’s some shared values to start the discussion on, but I really think that this idea of environmentalism as a confrontationist activity is not going to work in the long term, I think there’s value in that and it’s important for there to be people that play that role, but ultimately, like we need to work all together with those that have the most different perspectives than ours, because otherwise, we’re going to keep going on the path that we’ve been going, you know, for the last 50 years, which is [Inaudible08:23], isn’t very good for the planet.

Jarno Marttila  08:29

Yeah, that’s the same, also I’m from technical background. So, it’s like, these issues are not just on the kind of social state itself. It’s also technologies that side, but you need to have some kind of interoperability, but you need to be able to share the data and has to be like compatible together and it’s interesting to see it from more different situation different issues, but common goal, [Inaudible 08:55]?

Aimée Leslie  08:57

Well, I think ultimately, you said the key word, like having a common goal, thinking of common good, and would ultimately benefit our selfish interests. So, much more than our selfish interests will, that it’s not an easy message to convey or not an easy one to understand that this for some, but hopefully, we’ll change that over time.

Jarno Marttila  09:25

Yeah. So, after some projects related to the or can you give us like some kind of lay of the land like in Peru, we’ll talk about the fishing itself that might, how does it look like from the small-scale fishing perspective, and how is it in Peru, on to some projects around there?

Aimée Leslie  09:49

Yeah, so I’m originally from Costa Rica, and I’ve always been quite fond of the ocean and its species. So, that’s why even before joining WWF I worked with marine species, mainly cetaceans, whales and dolphins and marine turtles. In Peru, Peru has a 3000 Kilometer coastline and about 100 fishing ports. It has the biggest monospecific fishery in the world, which is the industrial entrevista fishery, which is mainly used to create fish produce. So, it’s not necessarily for direct human consumption, but it also has because of the current home worlds, an extremely rich sea. So, there’s a presence of lots of different kinds of marine biodiversity and therefore, it’s definitely a country where fisheries is, it’s in discussion if it’s the second or third most important sector for the country but it creates about 700,000 jobs, according to the latest estimates, which are almost 10 years old. So, that’s probably pretty outdated. Probably the impact that the sector has is even bigger in terms of the number of people that depend on this activity. One of the things I want to highlight there is that we need to think about fisheries not only as a fisherman on a boat extracting resource, right, but as the whole supply chain, because according to FAO, for example, 50% of the fishing fleets, or people involved in the fishery, fishing activity are woman, but women are not represented when we only think of the extractive activity, and women are the most underrepresented sector out of an already underrepresented sector. Well, on one hand, the industrial [Inaudible 12:00], fisheries has most of the attention.

So, it’s a pretty well managed fisheries and is on its way to being certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, but the rest of the fisheries are not. So, we work as WO Heroux with the Mahi Mahi and Jumbo Squid fisheries, which are the second and third most important fisheries. They’re the biggest artisanal fisheries, and they still exports. So, Mahi Mahi, mostly to the US, for example, and Jumbo Squid to Japan, and still, because as I was saying the last fishery census was done in 2012 and this is a very under managed fishery. So, there’s not a lot of knowledge of how many fishers there are, where they fish, how much they’re extracting. So, how many people depend on this activity? What’s the state of the resource, there’s some idea because there’s an institute called the mitophagy, which is the Marine Research Institute. It’s a government research institution. So, they do some estimates of you know, how the population is doing. They set some quotas, at least for some of the fisheries, right, but most of them don’t have that and most of them don’t have a fisheries management plan either. So, for a country that is where fisheries is such an important sector, the amount of attention that sector receives is quite limited. That creates a lot of frustration for the fishers as well, because then they have different pieces of legislation that are kind of imposed on them because there’s not really formal participatory processes set up in Peru for them to be involved in government decision making. Additional to that there’s a lot of changes in government just because of political instability. So, that means that the person in charge in the government is changing every few months or so. You’re always starting from scratch with a new person that comes in. So, it’s not like a long-term vision for the sector. That means just to close that then what they usually focus on is whoever screams the loudest which creates a lot of conflict because then the way that fishers and other sectors get attention is by protesting, you know, blocking roads and creating social conflict, because then they’ll get some attention focused on what they’re asking for, but there is a huge need for having a long term vision and plan and of course that includes traceability too.

Jarno Marttila  14:52

There’s a lot of very good keywords out there. Full chain traceability, I’m establishing like, where’s this food coming from Warren’s going nuts what happened in between, depending on the different markets, then that’s a mandatory information like, if you want to, let’s say, export to Europe, like you have to have full chain traceability, but then like, if the requirements come from the government side, and then just slapped on to the fishermen like, do this now, this is extra work, like, please do this extra work for free, and we’ll take this fish, then I’ll just sell it with the highest price, then these people that aren’t being squeezed from both directions, trying to be squeezed even more and it’s like, kind of the dynamic, it’s like, very kind of multi-dimensional broadband that you still need the information about oceans, as you said, like, there’s not really an accurate estimates of like, what is the state of fisheries around the world, it is known that more, we’re fishing more and more every year, but [Crosstalk 15:54].

Aimée Leslie  15:58

Of course, and that actually goes back to the point that you were mentioning before of having a common goal, you know, because even within government institutions, between themselves and within directions, inside government institutions, they don’t work with each other. So, they’re asking fishers to do different things, and sometimes contradicting things, you know. So, it’s a very difficult situation for a fisher that wants to be legal but doesn’t have the mechanisms or the tools to be them to have different impositions on them, but not all the information to be able to comply, and then the government might change in a couple of months and the requirements change along with that. So, it’s not an easy context. Hence, the life of a fisher is definitely a difficult one to be able to overcome all these bureaucratic hurdles.

Jarno Marttila  16:56

Oh, that is true. You have a project related to traceability, like there’s some like technological solutions that you have tried applying. Last time we talked about? It sounds like it’s making a significant impact. You have a lot of solutions, right? Can you a little bit, shine some light on what you’re doing and what’s the one is cool?

Aimée Leslie  17:18

Thanks. So, as I was saying, like the biggest issue in fisheries in the country is the informality of the sector where most fishers don’t have fishing permits for their activity and one of the processes established by the government to deal with this, and 2016 was to create a cooperative system. So, they decided that some fishers could come together create a cooperative, and through the cooperative, they would get permits, you know, and then the cooperative also really establishes a business model that could provide additional benefits to them. The problem with that was, because it was imposed top down, and it really didn’t come from the fishers, many of them don’t really understand the cooperative model or see the benefits or really work in a cooperative way. They just see it as a way to get their fishing permits. So, a lot of our work too, has been in trying to help these cooperatives organize, meet the legal requirements, but also find ways to you know, have financial benefits, by being part of this cooperative system. So, one of the requirements that the cooperatives have is that they need to have catch documentation systems in place. Now, the government did not facilitate the systems as such. So, that’s how we created TrazApp, which is the traceability system that you know about. So, TrazApp has a user for skippers or ship captains, for ship owners, and for the intermediaries, brokers or, you know, middle people, and we’re on our way to start working with processing plants as well. Now, I do need to mention that the government has created a system for the industrial [Inaudible 19:24], fisheries, and they want to also expand to the artisanal fisheries, particularly the ministry of production that oversees fisheries, then I guess the main difference is that we developed TrazApp based on one hand user needs. So, you know, talking with the fishers seeing what was most useful for them if this worked if this didn’t work, just tweaking the system with a user centered approach, and also based on international standards like the GDST right? On the ministry of production side, they’ve mainly been looking at the sanctions piece. So, what is the information they need to monitor and control this fishery, and it doesn’t even have an application and I say doesn’t even because most fishers don’t have computers, they have a cell phone. So, what they need is an app, and the government still hasn’t created an app. So, we’ve been in discussions with lucid to see if either we give them TrazApp, and we help them develop their own app or whatnot, but based on our learnings, in talking to people, like yourself, and others around the world that have been working on traceability systems, we’ve learned two main things. One is that clearly, we need to get everybody sitting at the table and agreeing on what is the vision for traceability for the country and how are we going to make the pieces of the puzzle come together. The second is interoperability, which you already mentioned.

Jarno Marttila  21:11

Yeah, that’s very nice to hear that you’re using the GDST standard. There isn’t a lot of data standards, like if you learn about a little bit the data standards themselves. Like there’s this common job that might, there’s 16 data standards, and then someone comes in, I know, let’s combine all these together and then they have 17 data standards, but if nobody kind of can take them into use, then they’re all kind of useless, but GDST, seems to be a very good approach. We’re also using that in our own project in Tracy, I’m just kind of like the basic list of this is what you should capture and [Inaudible 21:50], between different systems and it’s great to hear that there’s so many stakeholders I didn’t manage to incorporate into your application. That’s really great. We can tell who is using this data, then in the end, like how does it kind of permeate through the chain of the stakeholders?

Aimée Leslie  22:15

Sure. So, on one hand, I think, you know, the common theme of this interview is going to be that common goal points, because clearly, that is the key to make any of this work, right, because otherwise, if we continue with the silo approach, we’re just transferring the issues on the current paper-based system into the digital world. In reality, what we currently have is a system that allows for a lot of fraud and corruption. I mean, basically, there’s just documents that have absolutely incorrect information. I’ll give a few specific examples. So, as I was saying, women are the most invisibles sector within fisheries, followed by the fishers themselves. By the fishers, I mean, specifically the fishing crew. So, they usually don’t have, you know, formal contracts, insurance. Just the benefits you would expect from work, right? That also means that they have a bit of flexibility. So, you know, it’s not going well on the fishery there, they might go and do some other activity related to production, for example, but what that means is that there’s a bend, you have a few legally registered fishing crew that might be on 20 boats at the same time, because, you know, when you’re filling out the paperwork, I’m saying so and so is on my vessel, so and so and apparently, he has either twin brothers or you know, because he’s in different parts of the sea at any given time, because there’s a huge lack of verification possible with paper based systems, right? That should improve with the digital process. The other thing that happens is because the fishers have, they’re not formal and they have very limited opportunities in terms of them legally demonstrating their catch. There’s a lot of rivalries within the suspect vehicle.

To be honest, this is one of the main reasons why they want to be formal because bribes have become so expensive. It wasn’t financially sustainable for them. So, this is why the ship owners and fishers themselves are asking for memorization. Then you have the intermediary who’s usually the one that cleans things up, right so like, provides the paperwork makes things look good and whatnot, but then when you check the paperwork, you see that there’s fish that’s apparently coming from Suzanna, and Suzanna is not even on the coast. So, there’s huge mistakes in the paper-based system that are very difficult to verify and of course are not in real time and hence, you know, these are part of the problems that we hope to solve with the traceability system. To date, what we have is about 300 users of the system. So, there’s three fishing corpus that we work with in the north of the country, which concentrates about 90% of the Mahi Mahi and Jumbo Squid fisheries and Peru is one of the biggest exporters of both of these products. The fishing corpus represent in total about 800 fishers and that represents a high percentage of the total of the fishery, the exact number skips my mind. So, of those 800 members between the three different corpus about 300 are currently using that, of course, COVID has hindered our efforts to continue socializing and training for the use of app, but on the other hand, there was a point where we were like looking at the graphs, because Jose who I mentioned before, like, he checks this every day, this is like his baby, right? So, we are not software developers, we are an NGO, and this is not our business by any means. So, we hired developers to create the system.

The fishers using the app to register their catches, right and it’s provided benefit to them, because they have a history of how much they’ve caught over time, you know, in one place, it’s easy to understand and it’s even in for safety at sea, like their wives know, you know, when they’re out how long they should be out and when to expect them back and things like that. So, there’s been additional benefits that even we didn’t expect, but at some point, and the current pandemic, we saw no catches being registered, right. We’re like, damn, they just stopped using the app, but then it started going up again. So, clearly it was because they weren’t fishing due to the situation, and then when they were fishing again, they started reporting their catch again. Every time there is a training event, there’s more users of it. The last thing I’ll say is that we have an intern named [Inaudible 27:36], who is doing her thesis on traceability, and she’s gone to different fishing ports than the ones where we are working and she’s found there’s even intermediaries that are already using TrazApp. So, they have like a sand that says producer and like, you know, the fishing out already, even though they really don’t have anything to do with TrazApp, but you know, hey, and kind of promote themselves sustainable because they’re already using the app, even though we’ve provided no capacity building neither for intermediaries yet, nor in these specific fishing ports. So, I think it’s taken a life of its own, which is great to see, but still, this is only a pilot project, you know, proof of concept. Ultimately, our vision is not for TrazApp to be the Peruvian fishery system, but just to demonstrate the benefits of having a traceability system. That’s it.

Jarno Marttila  28:34

Yeah, that sounds already like it’s been very successful for a proof of concept that you have organic growth, people come into this application, even though you never introduced application for themselves. That’s very interesting, like, the thought of like, what is the future of this traceability applications that NGOs are like, great way to touch the actual users like to get like access to the official folder and get access to the communities and get the kind of the insight and the knowledge and help to drive kind of tools on test and plan things, but what happens afterwards, the proof of concept stage like who should take the responsibility of this technologies, and then driving further so it becomes like kind of, I don’t know, the standard to be used, let’s say and [Inaudible 29:23], it’s kind of a fundamental challenge, but do you have some like ideas or omissions that who would it be in there?

Aimée Leslie  29:31

Well, that’s a huge can of worms. I mean, that’s what got us talking about in the first place, right? Because we started asking these questions to the US office. So, to give you a bit of history, like before I joined the Peruvian office, when someone was leading the team. He’s now part of EDF, the Environmental Defense Fund. I talked to him, and he said his vision was that this was going to be, you know, open source, open code system, right? He was the originator of this, and that he would go and speak to the government about it. They just didn’t understand they would say things like, yeah, this system needs to be ours and whatnot and he’s like, that’s not the point at all. So, because the problem with the political instability of Peru or the Peruvian government institutions, that goes hand in hand with the lack of long term vision from policy perspective for the fisheries sector, is that you’re always dependent on the individual that is in some kind of position or power, and what he thinks, you know, and he had people that come from non-fisheries related sectors, you know, take on these roles, and it’s, one step forward one step backward process. So, it definitely is. It requires lots of patience and consistency, and you know, consistent messaging, because little by little the message starts, or you send Spanish, so like seeping in, right? So, I guess as we move forward, and we have seen that now Prusa, has seen the best guy that has more brothers and sisters by the moment, because they keep increasing and like now, we have this little system that does this for the products and this system that does, I don’t know them all myself. We have another government institution, which is the sanitary authority, that’s called 21st, that is going to develop their traceability system. So, clearly, this is something that is going to continue to bubble up, and especially if now the US and the EU, and Japan and China are looking at requiring traceability for their fisheries products, right?

So, to me it again, it goes back to this lack of vision, like you can’t only see your part of the puzzle, because otherwise, we fail as a country. I mean, that’s, for me the biggest issue, it’s like one of the processing plants, representatives I talked to, he said, I see the government as my biggest partner, because they get like, I don’t know, a huge percentage of the revenue because of the taxes. So, they should be the ones that would be most interested in my being successful because it directly benefits them, right? But the government doesn’t seem to see that at all. The government vision is like I shouldn’t be benefiting any private institution. No. So, again, this is an issue of vision. So, too close to that and specifically respond to your question, the questions that started arising on our end, as we move forward was, who should own the system? Who should have access to the system and its data? How should these decisions be made, right? So, these are when we asked the US office about this, they’re like, well, these are, you know, hardcore questions, you should just go and do the research and let us know what you find and so that’s what we’ve done. You know, since the end of last year, since like October, we started this research project where we originally intended to interview 15 experts around the globe that were already working on fisheries traceability systems and see how they were responding to these questions. Now, we’ve interviewed over 25, and the more you talk to people, the more they recommend other people, but we need to stop at some point.

Jarno Marttila  33:53

[Inaudible 33:55].

Aimée Leslie  33:59

Exactly, but there’s a very big difference on topics where we might have not expected to see that many differences. For example, there’s countries where the owners of the system are NGOs, or governments, or private sector, or technology providers, like the whole spectrum is a possibility. There is a clear perspective that the best option it seems is that either governments or technology provider, or technology providers, probably the best option because they’re the ones that can give maintenance to the system that can solve any problems that might come up, they can expand on the system if needed, and can provide licenses to any users via government, via fishers, via NGOs. That makes the most sense because probably technology providers I would think know a little bit more about technology than NGOs fishers. You know processing plan or government, but for the government to have some kind of role in a centralized system seems to be what a lot of people have looked at. I think that makes sense in terms of making sure that the government gets all the information they need for civil filter role, right? Especially if it’s quality control, monitoring control, and surveillance or, you know, quota assessment, whatever that might be, but the key outcome, again, is it’s that whatever is built just needs to be interoperable, we need to stop thinking that there’s going to be one system that solves everybody’s needs, but that’s where the GDST. So, the global civil dialogue, proceed for traceability and other standards come in and sort of established like, this is what everybody needs to know. The language that production markets can use to talk to consumer markets. That should be the basis for what everybody builds, in an ideal world that doesn’t exist, because it’s not [Inaudible 36:10], but that’s what we should aim for. Finally, sorry, in that sense, I guess, the just the reality that the one system is not going to be able to fulfill everybody’s needs, because if I’m a processing plant, I might want information about, you know, temperature, about fuel consumption, about ice consumption that the government doesn’t care about. So, why is the government going to limit me from acquiring that information, I should be able to acquire all the information I need for my business plus, with the government needs, give the government what they need, and, you know, use the rest of my information to use my business. That should all talk to each other, rather than have separate systems.

Jarno Marttila  36:56

Yeah. That’s a lot of information in a package, but I fully underline on sinology, or when you’re saying like, that’s something else will be, we run together along with the tracer project in the Philippines that first with open source and open code, like that’s excellent, like approach for transparent applications. It was also my first thing that we wanted to check out, like, hey, is there any like open-source trace of the application we could take into use, like, implement our features and functionalities on top of it and kind of give back to the whole business community. We couldn’t find anything that would fit our purpose. So, it feels like Global ink is such a waste of developer resources that everyone just has to start from scratch, like, okay, we’ll make your own traceability, and our reality is that we’re gonna be all with us and saying, like this different purpose, different application, fit the purpose solutions. As long as the company charter, it’s great, but if we would have like, some kind of like a common base transport application, like incitements, WWF, that everyone can just take into views of moving like a great step forward for the next technology provider who needs to define WWF after meet the purpose.

Aimée Leslie  38:24

I completely agree. The interesting thing here, and this is also something that came out in the interviews we did is that the first question to be asked is, what is the traceability system for right? Because based on what the system is for, you respond to some of the additional questions like who should be the owner, what is the data to access? Who should access that data? Now, that being said, I think that a traceability system can have multiple purposes, but even so when we started this work again, before my time in WWF route, they did a benchmark analysis of what were the other systems out there and if there was any of them that we could bring to Peru. The decision was that we needed to build our own system, mainly because of the security concerns of the government, like, they would not be willing to use something that was made somewhere else, as far as I understand it anyways. Today, in the conversations that we have with the government authority, what they say is that it needs to be there’s so again, I think it comes back to this like on one hand I do understand their concerns of you know, we’re investing time and effort in this if this falls apart, we lose something that is important to us. So, we need to make sure it’s for our long term security and fulfilling our government role that I understand, but the other perspective that they have is that it needs to be built by us, like in house, you know, and so I think, there’s this message of you need to think about the world and not just your own specific needs and about what your market is requiring about how that’s gonna affect the whole supply chain, which is your constituency. To make these kinds of decisions, you can’t just look at this from a silo approach, but it’s important progress.

Jarno Marttila  40:33

Yeah, the world isn’t ready, yet this wants to build.

Aimée Leslie  40:36

But it’s crazy, you know, because there are if you think about other sectors, they’ve been doing this for ages, right. So, much more advanced systems than what we’re trying to start with. This is also something worth mentioning, which is that one of the key questions is what kind of system you should use. What has been made clear to me based on the interviews that we’ve done is that you need to start with fulfilling your basic needs, right? You can’t think about AI technology if you don’t even have key data elements being filled in, right. So, start simply, and then growing is probably the best way to go. Finally, this is clearly something that just takes a lot of time. Like even in the US, they say this is taken 10 years, something like this and some fisheries to be developed. So, this is not something that happens from one day to the next, but the COVID context demonstrates, this is really important, like this can help us solve lots of issues in determining where problems show up in the supply chain, when there’s a concern, be it a health concern, a sanitary concern, and environmental concern, whatever, right? So this information ultimately is for the common good, which again, is the theme of this talk.

Jarno Marttila  42:01

Yeah, there’s a lot of benefits for traceability, like as a whole, not just like to help foods, health, safety and transparency, but there’s also like, smarter pool that the customers say in Finland, they want to know what this food is coming from where is the space court, where I want to know, I’m not gonna die, if I didn’t know where it’s produced, and people are more also willing to pay more money for that. They don’t see, like in the chemo cram price, that they will gladly pay a little bit more if it goes back to the purpose than if it goes back to the people who are producing or contribute like to the data and information.

Aimée Leslie  42:45

So, you know, one thing very interesting on that that came out from the interviews that I wasn’t expecting, because we kind of all thinks this, you know that the people are willing to pay more for this, but I don’t think it applies everywhere. As one of the things that a lot of the people were saying mainly from the retailer’s side is that they found that people aren’t necessarily usually willing to pay more, at least in some of the markets. So, hence, what now they’re promoting are where they do see the benefit is guaranteeing access. So, rather than getting a better price for your product, because when they are being asked to implement traceability in by let’s say, a retailer, it doesn’t come with an additional benefit, like you know, here, I want you to do this, I’m going to pay you 5% more, what not, it’s like no, here, you have to do this. Good luck, I’m still going to pay you the same price, but at the same time, like if you have that it does guarantee you access to the markets in the future and as we were discussing before, this is going to become a more common regulation in all these important international markets as time goes by. So, the quicker people implement this, the sooner they resolve these problems before you have embargoes, because this is the other thing.  I’ll just mention this quickly. I found it a very interesting case that in Mexico and the upper Gulf of California with the imminent extinction of the Makita, which is the small porpoise, which is like a small dolphin, right that only exists in the upper Gulf of California. There’s under 50 animals left and its main cause of death is bycatch, and fisheries and lots of these fishery’s products are exporting to the US. So, now products from that area are embargoed, they cannot export to the US because of this bycatch because the US now has this Marine Mammal Protection Act import regulation. So, hence traceability is really important for other Mexican fisheries to demonstrate that their product does not come from the upper Gulf of California. So, these things are going to keep happening more and more.

Jarno Marttila  45:09

For sure. Yeah, it’s very interesting. I haven’t really heard about my traceability how it’s been utilized, in the North or South America, my kind of cool line or target has been exactly Southeast Asia and Philippines. So, it’s super interesting to hear about, like how it’s been applied there.

Aimée Leslie  45:34

Well, I think what you guys have done in the Philippines is great, and it would be wonderful for us to incorporate some of those lessons learned into our own work and because access to financial mechanisms is, again, one of the issues that the artisanal fishing sector has. So, if the more benefits we can provide through the system, the better it will be, because this idea that we just impose it through a regulation it’s like the cooperative example I was giving, you know, if people don’t really buy into the idea, you can make it a legal requirement. They might use it because they have to, but they’re not going to see all the benefits and make the most of it and, you know, really contribute to their own activity. Again, therefore the country and based on it.

Jarno Marttila  46:25

For sure looks like [Inaudible 46:27], been trying to stack up the incentives, that one incentive is like, okay, well, in the future, if you would start to use something like this application, like the TrazApp, then you can become eligible to export this tuna to new markets. If you can do that, then it’s more likely that you will get paid more per kilogram for this catch, because it’s a high money and catch if you can export it, but also long, we tried to find ways to target you directly incentivized to produce this information, like could we maybe pay for this data, if you can find market that’s willing to buy the data, you can verify that data that we’re showing them or that people are more interested about this. So, then we can start to tie them, like supply chain stakeholders during that moment. If that makes the biggest supply chain stakeholder accepts data, then they will curate it somehow, they will see that okay, is this factual or not gonna get this, like multiple letters of verification along the chain? So that of data matures becomes more humane and more pure and more important?

Aimée Leslie  47:34

Yeah. You know, that’s interesting, because this whole pandemic has touched us in different ways, obviously, from a health perspective, from a mental health perspective, and many others, but for me personally, when one of the biggest concerns has been what is the impact that this is having on our democracy? Particularly, I’m reading this book called Surveillance Capitalism. So, when we think about data, it’s ironic, right? Because I am concerned about this and still I’m working on on technology system together on my data, but that being said, like it goes back to the common good thing, because I think a traceability system benefits the users, it benefits, you know, to increase legality, to reduce illegal fishing, it benefits the environment to have a better stock management and see what are the fishing practices in place and making sure it doesn’t have an impact. It benefits the consumer from a health perspective and having more information about the catches, you know, so it has a common good theme around that activity versus an authoritarian privacy invasion thing, which we are seeing in other sectors. So, I just wanted to mention that because I think it’s important.

Jarno Marttila  49:03

I have to give a look at that book. Sounds so interesting.

Aimée Leslie  49:07

Yes, you will enjoy it, because it’s a focus on technology and how technology is now being used to gather information. You know, and the implications of that and just very briefly, I’ll give one last example, which is that on a search engine, to not name any names, where you provide, you know, these questions, and all that information is gathered, and when the managers of these companies are asked about that, it’s like yeah, that’s just the way the search engine works. As if, you know, that was a technical requirement. Obviously, somebody decided that was the way it worked.

Jarno Marttila  49:52

That’s [Inaudible 49:52].

Aimée Leslie  49:56

Exactly, and this is something interesting because I do think that the new generation, more than anybody, just accept that we have no privacy. I mean, it’s just a normal thing, but anyways, I am obviously getting off track.

Jarno Marttila  50:10

No, that’s just the price for the applications, the privacy on the line, it’s especially you and I, we had the GDPR revelation that is very hard, like if the companies don’t follow it, then they can get very harsh fines. That’s all something that will apply to future trades with applications that how do you make sure that all of the right participants can have access to the right information at the right time?

Aimée Leslie  50:37

That’s a good point. Honestly, that’s an unanswered question for us right now and trying to define, so to give a specific example, so I mentioned, we have these 300 registered users on TrazApp that have voluntarily given all their information. So, if we do give this system to the ministry of production, for example, how do we do that? How do we make sure we’re protecting the privacy of the people that have voluntarily given our information and not breaking, you know, the law or their rights or whatnot, and transferring that data? Because they give it to us and not to the government. You know, this part of work needs to be thought through as well.

Jarno Marttila  51:18

Yeah, I’m looking forward to hear how TrazApp is going in the future. It’s a super interesting project out there. So, some research papers came out from it. It’s a very interesting set of users you have there.

Aimée Leslie  51:30

Thanks, Jarno. So, now we’re not that great. I’ll say in WWF Peru, at providing research papers, at least not in the marine team, but I’m happy to share the reports as they come out and distant. You know, I really want to learn more about what you guys are doing with Tracy as well. So, let’s definitely keep in touch.

Jarno Marttila  51:49

Yeah, we’ll definitely keep in touch about it. Thank you, Aimée, for coming to the podcast. Maybe we’ll have another one later on. Let me learn more about Tracy some lessons learned.

Aimée Leslie  52:02

Sounds good, Jarno, thanks for the invite and it is always a pleasure to talk to you.