SoFISHticated policy - social perspectives on the fish conflict in the Northeast Atlantic

Autor(en)

Anja Gänsbauer, Harald Wilfing, Ulrike Bechtold

Abstrakt

Ecosystem changes currently question the traditional allocation of fishing rights and quotas in the fishery of Northeast Atlantic mackerel and Norwegian spring-spawning herring in the Northeast Atlantic. Variability in the distribution of these highly migratory species escalated in a political conflict between member states of the European Union, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway, which is a driving force for unsustainable fishery. The aim of this paper is to investigate this conflict by outlining the social understandings of diverse stakeholders by using the Q methodology. The method reduced the complexity of numerous opinions, detected four distinct perspectives and simultaneously categorised the participating stakeholders. Although the perspectives differ in various elements, the protection of economic interests seems to dominate over the quest for sustainability. The call of all stakeholders in this study to clarify the fishing rights in the Northeast Atlantic reveals a clear deficiency of the current international fishery management in handling abrupt ecological changes and the necessity to acknowledge this as a complex adaptive system.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung, Department für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Institut für Lehrer*innenbildung

Externe Organisation(en)

Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)

Journal

Marine Policy

Band

66

Seiten

93-103

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

0308-597X

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2016.01.014

Publikationsdatum

04-2016

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

507024 Umweltpolitik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Allgemeine Umweltwissenschaft, Economics and Econometrics, Aquatic Science, Law, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/e7edc4ea-0bad-4dad-92ff-35c0f28b471d