Launched in 2018, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), an Amsterdam, Netherlands-based nonprofit, has developed a series of benchmarks to assess 2,000 of the world’s most influential companies.
Helen Packer is the ocean engagement lead at WBA, a role which includes work with the seafood industry. Packer spoke with SeafoodSource about why it’s beneficial to place accountability at the center of sustainable and responsible seafood discussions, how it can return value to companies, and how the seafood industry stacks up in this realm against other industries.
Packer will be leading a panel at the 2026 Seafood Expo North America on the topic titled “Exploring the Business Case for Accountability and Transparency in the Seafood Sector.” The panel will be held on Sunday, 15 March from 1:15 to 2 p.m. EDT in Room 156A of the Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center, featuring representatives from The Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions, FishWise, The NGO Tuna Forum, and the Walton Family Foundation.
SeafoodSource: Accountability is usually a topic that is avoided, especially between industry and NGOs, but you want to call it out. Why?
Packer: Accountability has been central to making the seafood industry more sustainable and more responsible, but it is rarely discussed as a standalone topic. Now that there is a large ecosystem of organizations and platforms to incentivize and support industry data collection, reporting, and transparency, it is a good time to reflect on the corporate accountability infrastructure that has been created and assess its effectiveness.
Accountability is central to the work WBA does, so we thought we could bring our learning and knowledge on corporate accountability to look at this in more depth within the seafood sector. Essentially, WBA is interested in collecting lessons learned from industry and seafood stakeholders to identify opportunities for improving corporate accountability in a way that works for companies and their stakeholders while also leading to long-lasting impact.
What we found is that while the sustainable seafood movement was initially focused on punitive accountability approaches (e.g., name-and-shame campaigns), there has been a gradual shift toward learning and capacity-building approaches, as well as creating tools for industry to engage in sustainability such as certification and improvement projects. While both approaches are essential to drive progress, it seems like there has been a shift away from rankings and name-and-shame, except for the occasional investigative report that links bad practices on the water to brands and retailers.
While this still creates reputational risks, it is usually short-lived and punctual and does not allow us to understand progress and remaining gaps on a bigger scale. We need a structured and shared system for independently measuring progress at the sectoral level as well as at the company level. This will help companies and stakeholders to understand what approaches work and which ones do not.
SeafoodSource: Are there other potential benefits from accountability that companies may not be weighing when considering the value of reporting and transparency?
Packer: We believe that having a strong accountability system based on credible reporting can have many benefits for companies, including ensuring progress and good practices are rewarded by stakeholders while those not making enough progress are incentivized to engage more, building stakeholder trust through transparent communication, supporting learning loops inside and outside a company through better data and aligned metrics for measuring progress, and reducing risks.
However, I think that currently, the business case for accountability and transparency is not clear. For instance, we conducted a company survey asking about the perceived risks and benefits of public reporting. The most mentioned benefits were meeting customer requirements for data, improved stakeholder trust, and learning-based dialogues with stakeholders, while the top risks were being criticized by NGOs and being perceived as not doing enough. This reinforces the need to work with industry to redesign how we incentivize more reporting and transparency without then turning around and punishing companies for their engagement. It’s a tricky balance between rewarding transparency, supporting learning, and incentivizing progress.
SeafoodSource: How can we make reporting and transparency more efficient for companies and more valuable?
Packer: Based on our findings, we see several opportunities for making reporting and transparency more efficient for companies.
Stakeholders need to better align their reporting expectations from companies, including aligned metrics. By stakeholders, I mean buyers, NGOs, investors, banks, and regulators. At the moment, companies are asked to meet too many different kinds of requirements, which is extremely time-consuming and inefficient. The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability plays a very important role in this as it creates standards around how and what data is collected in seafood supply chains – the foundation for credible transparency and reporting against a common shared set of metrics. Reporting standards also play a role in creating alignment; for example, the Global Reporting Initiative and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures have seafood-specific reporting guidance. The monitoring and evaluation commitment framework (MCEF) also presents an interesting opportunity for companies that are at the beginning of their reporting journey.
Companies should play a role in shaping those data and reporting standards as much as possible. This is different from aligning stakeholder expectations around performance, which is not possible. NGOs will also set the ceiling, while other stakeholders like financial institutions set the floor. For transparency and reporting to become more valuable, we need as a seafood community to agree on ways to reward transparency while balancing that with rewarding progress.
SeafoodSource: WBA works across industries. How does seafood look compared to other industries?
Packer: Seafood stands out from other sectors because it has both a dense and fragile accountability landscape. Unlike apparel, mining, or palm oil – where investor pressure and disclosure rules shape corporate behavior – seafood is dominated by fragmented, privately owned companies that often avoid reporting unless required. The sector hosts a large ecosystem of specialized tools and initiatives, yet these remain uneven and hard to sustain over time.
What makes seafood particularly distinctive is the complexity and opacity of its supply chains: Vessels are mobile, products change hands frequently, and traceability is weak. Worker power is also significantly lower than in other global industries, with extremely low unionization and many fishers operating outside formal employment. As a result, grassroots leverage is limited compared with sectors where workers can more easily identify and target specific companies.
Globally, NGOs have built extensive improvement‑focused infrastructure, but long-term, consequence‑driven campaigns remain thinner than in apparel, electronics, or energy.
SeafoodSource: What would be your big takeaway for seafood companies on accountability, reporting, and transparency?
Packer: For most companies, I am sure engaging on the issue of accountability sounds like a trip to the dentist or worse. But, companies need to have a stronger hand in determining or co-designing a system that works for everyone while also driving progress and impact. As I said, there are some great examples of seafood companies creating value through reporting and transparency that companies can learn from, and all indications are that governments and buyers continue to move toward requirements for greater supply chain control and reporting. The industry should be designing how that happens.