Fish, Food and the Blue Economy
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The Blue Economy, Blue Growth and the Blue Revolution have become popular slogans to galvanize the potential of the oceans in contributing to human prosperity and food security. This wave of ‘blue enthusiasm’ aims to attract new investors into the maritime economy and improve governance of the oceans. But it also risks sweeping away those with less capital to invest, including the small scale fishers and farmers that are the largest group of ocean resource users, globally. Supporters of the blue economy idea claim it can help to reduce global economic inequalities by providing new opportunities for poverty reduction, nutrition security and improved wellbeing, while sustaining the productive capacity of ocean and coastal ecosystems. Can it? Will it? How? What will happen to small-scale fisheries and aquaculture?
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Fish, Food and the Blue Economy
- 1. Fish, Food and the Blue Economy Edward H Allison School of Marine and Environmental Affairs University of Washington
- 2. Securing space in the sea for small-scale fisheries Pip Cohen, Edward Allison, Neil Andrew, Joshua Cinner, Louisa Evans, Michael Fabinyi, Len Garces, Stephen Hall, Christina Hicks, Terence Hughes Svein Jentoft, Rosalie Masu, David Mills, Emmanuel Mbaru, Blake Ratner
- 3. 1. Representations and Conceptual frames: our relationship with the oceans, brief history of maritime capitalism and the institutions associated with it; adding artefacts, power and social difference to social-ecological systems frameworks(Miller et al, 2014); acknowledging the Anthropocene 3. The territorialization of maritime space and the challenges and opportunities of fluidity and volume (Steinberg, 1999; Peters & Steinberg, 2015) 4. The blue economy and blue growth – societal benefits and risks (OECD, 2016; EIU, 2015, WWF 2015). Will there be space for fish and food, and SSF in particular? 5. Ocean and coastal futures: are there viable and compelling alternative visions to the (neoliberal) Blue Economy? Themes
- 4. Guiding questions (Jentoft, 2006 – Phronetic Dimension, from Flyvbjerg, 2001) 1. Where are we going? 2. Is this desirable? 3. Who benefits and who is losing out? 4. Which mechanisms of power make us stay on course? 5. What should be done if we are on the wrong track?
- 5. 1. Representations and conceptual framings 3. The territorialization of maritime space 4. The blue economy and blue growth 5. Ocean and coastal futures Themes
- 6. Attitudes to the sea vary across contemporary cultures “‘Oceania’ connotes a sea of islands with their inhabitants. The world of our ancestors was a large sea full of places to explore, to make their homes in, to breed generations of seafarers like themselves. People in this environment were at home in the sea”. “The sea is no place to be if you can help it, and to try to cross it betrays a rashness bordering on hubris…” W.H. Auden (1951) The Enchafed Flood Epeli Hau’ofa (1993) Our Sea of Islands
- 7. Co-existing/competing paradigms: oceans as ‘wilderness’ and the Anthropocene Ocean
- 8. Capitalism at sea: European trading companies
- 9. Capitalism at sea, from the early modern era Phases (Steinberg, 1999) Merchant capitalism (c. 1450-1760) Industrial capitalism (c. 1760-1970) Neoliberal (postmodern) capitalism (1970s to present) Key legislation Treaty of Tordesillas (Spain and Portugal) 1494 Mare Liberum (Grotius) - 1609 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and EEZs (1982 – 1994) Elements of neoliberal capitalism ‘Small state’, deregulation of financial markets, removal of trade barriers, withdrawal of subsidies, encourage consumer spending, resulting in: Consolidation/economies of scale (e.g. Containerization) Globalization of fish trade Commodification of nature (ecosystem services, natural capital) Privatization of public (state and global) goods – ITQs, MSP, ICZM, ‘Ocean grabbing’ The Blue Economy – aligns the above strategies with concepts such as environmental sustainability and equitable benefit sharing (‘the triple bottom line’)
- 10. Neoliberalism and development • An evolution of ‘laissez faire’ capitalism; free markets, small government • The Washington Consensus: “Stabilize, privatize, liberalize”; structural adjustment
- 11. Adding artifacts to social-ecological systems – the HANS framework (Miller et al., 2014) e.g. Oil and gas platforms and pipelines, Gulf of Mexico
- 13. 1. Changing representations of the ocean 2. Conceptual frames 3. The territorialization of maritime space 4. The blue economy and blue growth 5. Ocean and coastal futures Themes
- 14. Fixed boundaries in fluid environments: India-Bangladesh maritime border dispute 1947-2014
- 16. The territorialization of marine conservation: Large MPAs Jones & Dos Santos, 2016. Marine Policy 73: 231-4
- 18. 1. Changing representations of the ocean 2. Conceptual frames 3. The territorialization of maritime space 4. The blue economy and blue growth 5. Ocean and coastal futures Themes
- 19. Blue too? Two blue economies
- 20. Kinda Blue: The Ocean Economy (OECD, 2016)
- 21. Blue economy employment (OECD, 2016): leaves out small-scale fisheries… Fisheries Aquaculture Offshore energy Ports and shipping Tourism Mining 107 21 1 9 12 0 What are marine governance specialists looking at? MARE 2017 papers by economic sector
- 22. © hellio-van ingen = 5 Million Total employment SSF employment SSF developing Female SSF under-reported, under-valued
- 23. Ocean assets are worth 24 trillion dollars - WWF (2015)
- 24. States, IGOs and conservation NGOs all align behind a ‘blue economy’ approach…
- 25. Committing to socially responsible seafood Kittinger, Teh, Allison et al. (2017) Science 356
- 26. Industrial marine fisheries: who catches the world’s fish? McCauley et al (submitted) - High and middle-income countries completely dominate fishing on the high seas In the EEZs of low-income countries, industrial fishing is dominated by foreign fishing vessels from high and middle- income countries In the EEZs of middle and high- income countries, fishing is dominated by home fleets
- 27. The neoliberal promise: “A rising tide lifts all boats”
- 28. 1. Changing representations of the ocean 2. Conceptual frames 3. The territorialization of maritime space 4. The blue economy and blue growth 5. Ocean and coastal futures Themes
- 29. Extension of land-use planning and zoning approaches into the sea: Marine spatial planning, The Netherlands Ehler & Douvere (2008) Will Marine spatial planning resolve conflicts and result in sustained, equitable use of coastal seas?
- 30. The future ocean: Techno-utopias
- 32. Food from the sea – and not just seafood
- 34. Renewable energy from the sea
- 35. Offshore energy: solar ‘farms’ Huainan, China, 2017
- 36. The future of maritime transportation
- 37. New frontiers: sea bed mining Nautilus Ltd
- 40. Beyond the blue economy: towards a blue society?
- 41. Does WorldFish work within or challenge the existing structures of power? Public-private partnerships Ecosystem-based management Participatory marine spatial planning
- 42. SSF governance… Contemporary ocean governance reforms commonly recognize potential for economic wealth alongside risks to ecological sustainability Increasingly must account for the potential social impacts that a focused drive towards privatization and exclusionary policies will have on SSF. Avoiding these social impacts, and retaining the benefits SSF provide to society, requires improved representation of SSF at international and national levels The Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication provide timely guidance for governments, international institutions, civil society and industry dialogue around the future of the Blue Economy
- 43. Living in the Anthropocene: A safe and just space for humanity Raworth, K. (2012). Oxfam Policy and Practice: Climate Change and Resilience, 8(1), 1-26.
- 45. CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH)
- 46. Oceans connect societies as much as they divide them “Just as the sea is an open and ever flowing reality, so should our oceanic identity transcend all forms of insularity, to become one that is openly searching, inventive, and welcoming.” ― Epeli Hauʻofa (2008), We Are the Ocean. University of Hawaii www.pacificguardians.org
Editor's Notes
- I’m going to: 1) Advance the case that we are at a transformative stage in the Ocean’s development – technology, information, legal regimes, and investors that have accumulated unprecedented amounts of capital in relatively few hands and are looking for productive ways to accumulate even more. 2) In this period of transformation, the way we (society) think about the ocean matters. Our conceptual frames, metaphors, imaginings, incentives and enjoyments contribute to shaping the future of the oceans and humanity’s relationship with the fluid parts of our planet. 3) A currently dominant frame of analysis is that of the Blue Economy, and related concepts such as Blue Growth. I want to examine what that is, and why we, as a community of people concerned with social justice, should be critically engaged in the discussion about I just described you as a community of of people concerned with social justice, not as a community of people who work on aquaculture and fisheries. Yes, you are that, but the reason you are at WorldFish working on fish and aquaculture is that you are committed to addressing the inequalities that mean millions of people are poor and hungry. Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture are part of the solution. You wouldn’t be working on these solutions if you didn’t care about poverty and hunger 4) A prominent institututional foundation for the Blue Economy is the clear and explicit allocation of access to coastal and marine resources. In the neoliberal age, this is going beyond state claims to territorial waters, to forms of marine spatial planning and access regime design that facilitate the transformation of public goods into private benefits. We are essentially following a process on land, whereby communal and public land is turned into private property. Mobilities challenge the spatial delineatiion of the sea. Fish move through governed spaces. So do pollutants. So do smugglers, pirates, human traffickers, refugees and fugitives, drugs and weapons. Strengthening surveillance at sea is seen as imperative to creating a favorable climate for investment of private capital. The process of securing and defending access to coastal and marine resources by private investors can lead to the loss of access to traditional users of marine resources, through spatial exclusion that undermines the adaptive strategies of many maritime communities and makes it difficult for them to pursue the diversity of economic activities that are adapted to fluidity and mobility. Ultimately, such a process can result in accumulation by disposession I will conclude by looking to ocean and coastal futures and asking if there are alternative visions to the neoliberal blue economy, and what we, as scholars of the sea, might do to advance a conversation about what kind of relationship our societies might develop with the sea, and what kind of values such a relationship may be based upon.
- The ones in red are societal/political . The only one this community is consistently asking is the first one
- I don’t have time to go into the social and cultural constructions of the Ocean – books by geographer Phillip Steinberg and Art Historian John Mack so so. Suffice to say that such construction differ across cultures, within them, and across time
- The wilderness concept applies in those societies that do not see a spiritual or ecological union between people and nature. It first surfaced in the US forest service in the 1920s, and was later defined in law: Wilderness: ". . .an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself [sic] is a visitor who does not remain.” U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964 The concept has been influential in thinking about marine conservation ). Delegates of the fourth World Wilderness Congress of 1987 proposed the following defi- nition: ". . .marine areas where little or no evidence of human intrusion is present or permitted, so that natural processes will take place unaffected by human intervention” This matters because conservation organizations have become among the dominant actors in the small-scale fisheries and aquaculture spaces. The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International and WWF are all much bigger than WorldFish, and all of them have directors of Fisheries and Aquaculture. These organizations are bringing their way of thinking into the same spaces and forums that you work on, and they will influence your work. So it pays to understand where they are coming from.
- When you are debating the merits of territorial use rights in fisheries or the need to lease areas of coastal seas for shellfish farming, you are not doing so in a historical, legal or political vacuum. Penang is a great place to talk about capitalism and the seas – A sultanate of the Malay trading empire was colonized to facilitate the work of the British East India company, and the mix of people you see in Penang today are a reflection of maritime commerce. The Netherlands and the UK made enthusiastic and skillful use of the oceans as resource provider, transport surface and battleground (Steinberg, 1999, p11) Grotius argued for the freedom of the seas, enabling the Dutch East India company to compete in global trade with other European maritime powers. Grotian freedom of the seas…
- Neoliberalism establishes coherent institutions in support for the predominant role of market relations and market forces in the regulation of economic activity. Capital fully dominates labor Institustions of neoliberalism include weakening of social regulation, provatization and contracting out of public good and services, cutbacks in social programs ,tax cuts for business and the wealthy, marginalization of collective bargaining (unions), casualization of jobs, and unrestrained competition.
- Shipping lanes as invisible infrastructure….(Kimberley Peters)
- With maritime space becoming subject to more intensive use, the freedom of the seas .
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Moorhttp://www.monitor.upeace.org/images/ishak1.png
- A potential global flashpoint – South China Sea.
- I’m going to: 1) Advance the case that we are at a transformative stage in the Ocean’s development – technology, information, capital, goverannce. 2) In this period of transformation, the way we (society) think about the ocean matters. Our conceptual frames, metaphors, imaginings, incentives and enjoyments contribute to shaping the future of the oceans and humanity’s relationship with the fluid parts of our planet. 3) A currently dominant frame of analysis is that of the Blue Economy, and related concepts such as Blue Growth. I want to examine what that is, and why a bunch of fisheries and aquaculture people should engage with it 4) A prominent institututional foundation for the Blue Economy is the clear and explicit allocation of access to coastal and marine resources. In the neoliberal age, this is going beyond state claims to territorial waters, to forms of marine spatial planning and access regime design that facilitate the transformation of public goods into private benefits. We are essentially following a process that happened on land, whereby communal and public land is turned into private property. Mobilities challenge the spatial delineatiion of the sea. Of more concern than ‘leakage’ of private benefits that may undermine investment in and profit from the blue economy, are the costs to wider society of the leakages of externalities, and the loss of access to resources through spatial exclusion that undermines the adaptive strategies of maritime communities and economic activities that are build on and adapted to fluidity and mobility… and accumulation by disposession I will conclude by looking to ocean and coastal futures and asking if there are alternative visions to the neoliberal blue economy, and what we, as scholars of the sea, might do to advance a conversation about what kind of relationship our societies might develop with the sea, and what kind of values such a relationship may be based upon.
- Conceptual confusion – just like rights-based fishing. Explain the Blue Economy by Pauli The blue economy
- Conservation & ES – 24 Marine spatial planning – 48 Waste/pollution - 4
- Wanner 2015, writing in New Political Economy, sees T/he discourse of green economy/growth (or blue economy/growth) as deeply embedded in neoliberal captialism and constituting another form of a ‘passive revolution’ to co-opt and neutralize counter-hegemomic challenges to entrenched interests
- Supporters of the blue economy approach posit a future sea that is overfished, unsafe for commerce and littered with plastic, and see property rights and market- solutions to these threats. Balanced against these threats, there are also techno-optimist visions of the future oceans from blue economy proponents.
- Confronts similar institutional issues to emissions regulation
- It is not all futuristic fantasy, however. Offshore aquaculture is being tested out and seems likely to expand. Offshore salmon cage, Norway
- Energy from maritime mobility, but it requires placing fixed objects or artefacts and designating fixed spatial territories of operation…
- World’s largest offshore
- If this seems futuristic, the technology is already in use for water buses in Hong Kong. LNG fuel, new construction materials – Buckypaper - 50,000 times stronger than steel
- So the blue economy has a clear vision of what it wants to achieve, and how it wants to get there. It has roadmaps. We have some indications of where we want to go, but, like these signs, they are lying around in piles, still in need of organization.
- There are encouraging signs that other visions of the future ocean are emerging, New books in 2016/2017 that explore contemporary shifts in ocean and coastal governance and that explore the range of values that links us to the sea. Many are from MARE associated authors. These are, in a sense, a challenge to the hegemony of the blue economy
- More inclusive dialogue will undoubtedly drive home concerns over the current array of market-orientated reforms to ocean and fishery governance, and emphasize the need for a suite of approaches that consider social objectives alongside wealth generation and conservation, and that are adaptable to the diverse contexts in which SSF operate. If the Blue Economy is to be a legitimate vision for governing the oceans, then alongside industry and conservationists, the voices, interests and human rights of one of the largest groups of ocean-users – people who service, fish and trade from small-scale fisheries
- Research forms part of our program on SSF ….
- Which is part of a new programme that aims to use fisheries and aquaculture to assist 3.5 million people to exit poverty and reduce the number of people suffering from deficiencies in essential micronutrients by 2.4 million has been launched this month. Called the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agrifood Systems (FISH), it will be led by WorldFish and aims to enhance the contributions of fisheries and aquaculture to reducing poverty and improving food security and nutrition. It is designed to contribute to the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and of CGIAR’s overall goals
- We started with Plato warning of strange morals and manners accompanying maritime commerce, so I want to end with a positive view of the ocean’s potential role in connecting us. I leave you with the question of whether an ocean too rigidly sub-divided up by lines can have these beneficial effects on future society.