Overlapping Perimeters:
Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines, and Geoethics
by Martin Bohle
 |
| Martin Bohle |
European Commission, DG RTD
Corresponding Citizen Scientist / IAPG
Corresponding Citizen Scientist / IAPG
Picture credit: http://toobigtoignore.net
Introduction
This
abbreviated essay (contribution to the EADI Nordic conference) contextualizes the FAO
"Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in
the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication" (FAO SSF Guidelines) with
reflections on the meaning of 'Geoethics'. The
mutual context of both matters is provided through the lenses of four scholarly
contributions to address the goal in the panel description: "… further enrich[ed]
[the discus-sions] by developments arising from researching and promoting
geo-ethics in the Anthropocene, thus connecting the challenges and
opportunities of small-scale fisheries with other global issues".
The first
lens, "Global change and the future ocean: a grand challenge for marine sciences"
[C. Duarte 2014] describes the state of the global ocean and coastal seas under
the impact of anthropogenic global change, that is, within the 'Anthropocene'.
Duarte offers, also a definition of 'anthropogenic global change' [p.1], namely
"the global-scale changes resulting from the impact of human activity on
the major processes that regulate the functioning of the Biosphere"; which
in context of this essay should be read as 'functioning of the geo-biosphere'.
The second lens, "Global Ocean Governance: New and Emerging Issues"
[Campbell et al. 2016] brings into focus marine issue such as 'small-scale
fisheries', 'ocean acidification' and 'blue carbon' as pressing governance
concerns, which need to be addressed at regional and global scales, and for
which the FAO-SSF Guidelines provide an advanced application case. The third
lens, "Walking the talk: implementing the international guidelines for
securing sustainable small-scale fisheries" [Jentoft 2014] emphasize that
governance is the key challenge to implementing the FAO-SSF Guidelines; a
challenge of a wicked nature that therefore requires more than a managerial
approach to address it. The fourth lens, "Earth System Governance –
world politics in the Anthropocene" [Biermann 2014] shows that the implementation
challenge of the FAO-SSF Guidelines is one particular realization of a more
common governance challenge, which requires a normative approach to achieve a
sustainable governance of the 'wicked' global commons. The human actor is a
key-feature for the reflections in each of these four contributions. Similarly
the understanding the meanings of the notions 'Anthropocene' and 'Geoethics'
requires to put the human actor into the center of reflections.
The
focus on the human actor is the thread that entangles SSF-Guidelines,
Geoethics, and the Human Niche.
A first perimeter: niche-building and small-scale fisheries
Niche-building is an anthropocentric and historical process [Bonneuil and Fressoz 2013, Ellis 2015, Latour 2015, Hamilton et al 2015, Bohle 2016, Fuentes 2016, Hamilton 2017]. Since prehistoric times people purposefully alter their environments, at local, regional or continental scale; including the coastal zone [Mee 2012].
Niche-building is an anthropocentric and historical process [Bonneuil and Fressoz 2013, Ellis 2015, Latour 2015, Hamilton et al 2015, Bohle 2016, Fuentes 2016, Hamilton 2017]. Since prehistoric times people purposefully alter their environments, at local, regional or continental scale; including the coastal zone [Mee 2012].
The fate
of the small-scale fishery, which nowadays still contribute to about half of
the global fish catch and employ about 90% of the respective workforce (FAO), within
the industrialized use of the coastal zone (Newton et al 2012) may serve as
contemporary example how people are changing the global geo-biosphere.
The
shift of the dynamics of the Earth systems happens mainly by the impact of the
industrial global supply chains. Yet, the cumulated number of local artisanal
activities has its global impact, in particular when triggered through
environmental systems already strained by industrial exploitation. The
small-scale fishery provides one example, of several, of a 'cascading
eco-logical crisis' [Galaz et al. 2010] in the Anthropocene: failure of a local
socio-ecological system (decreasing fish stocks in Central West Africa because
of industrial over fishing) drives a cascade of crisis (Ebola hemorrhagic fever
outbreak):
'Fish stocks have declined along the Central West
African coast due to a large extent to rapid exploitation by high-tech
international fishing fleet and due to the degradation of mangrove forests, sea
grass beds and coral communities as a result of, for example, climate change
and pollution. Consequently, diets and trading activities shift to so-called
‘bushmeat’ such as chimpanzees and flying foxes. These are well-known sources
of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola, Marburg viruses and human monkeypox – all
with the suspected ability to rapidly spread and cascade across scales through
travel and trade. Moreover, increased bushmeat hunting has reportedly
contributed to the loss of species that promote important functions in
ecosystems, such as pollinators for food production. Loss of such organisms
often undermine the resilience of food producing landscapes and forest
ecosystems rendering them increasingly vulnerable to droughts and forest fires.
The combined impacts of fish stock decline, epidemic outbreaks, additional
losses in ecosystem services, water stress, and poverty put already fragile
states such as Congo and Cameroon under severe pressure [Galaz et al. 2010, p.
7-8, edited]'.
In the contemporary world, the change processes of the geo-biosphere are happening simultaneously at a local, regional and planetary scale, and they are composite of natural and social processes [Hulme 2011, Tickell 2011, Monastersky 2015, Seitzinger et al. 2015, Schimel et al. 2015]. The change concerns the marine environment too, to the point that the political decision was taken to list its sustainable use among the Sustainable Development Goals [United Nations Economic and Social Council, 2016]. Geoethical thinking may facilitate actors to federate around common application cases.
In the contemporary world, the change processes of the geo-biosphere are happening simultaneously at a local, regional and planetary scale, and they are composite of natural and social processes [Hulme 2011, Tickell 2011, Monastersky 2015, Seitzinger et al. 2015, Schimel et al. 2015]. The change concerns the marine environment too, to the point that the political decision was taken to list its sustainable use among the Sustainable Development Goals [United Nations Economic and Social Council, 2016]. Geoethical thinking may facilitate actors to federate around common application cases.
A second perimeter: Geoethics and application context
The application context for geoethical thinking is known [Mayer 2015, Peppoloni and Di Capua 2016, Bobrowsky et al 2017]. Applying geoethical thinking means, for geoscientists but not only for them, including new subjects into known application context.
In a
first context, geoethical thinking is perceived as tool for professional:
Geoethics includes various ethical dimensions such as of individual behavior,
social responsibility, and viewing Earth from different angles as a home for
many (Cape Town Statement on Geoethics). Geoethical thinking searches different equilibria for a
society-earth-centric view within a common frame-work, using, among other,
philosophical, scientific, and socio-economic concerns. Different equilibria
within a wider, common framework are needed in a diverse world: i) to reflect
upon individual and professional behavior in different societal settings, as
well as ii) to dwell on shared professional responsibility, integrity,
know-how, mutual understanding of diversity, and intellectual hones-ty.
In a
second context, geoethical thinking is about professional ethics: when
anthropogenic global change gets addressed as a governance challenge, then firm
professional ethics will be needed in a context of applied geosciences; for
example for matters such as risk taking, man-aging uncertainties, or revising
options. Regarding the underpinning scientific, technical and socio-economic
matters, each includes a range of standard ethical issues, such as whether the
particular scientific and governance choice is professional 'sound'.
In a
third context, geoethical thinking is about the ethics of expert advice and
(shared) com-mon sense: Today, many people ignore the processes and phenomena
that shape the intersections of people's cumulated activities and the
geo-biosphere. So far anthropogenic global change was unintended.
How insights about anthropogenic global change shape, including denial of
global change, are subject to dynamic social and political processes, such as
debates about lifestyles, preferences, values, and world-views. To that end,
the practitioners, professionals, and researchers who understand the related
processes and phenomena should share their professional insights with decision
makers and layperson and debate publically value statements, world-views, and
preferences.
In a
fourth context, geoethical thinking extends the application case of human value
systems: Our species has acquired the power to engineer planet Earth, namely to
drive anthropocentric global change by the number of people, societal
structures, and technological skills. Narrowly, anthropocentric global change
is about governing the intersections of human economic activities and the
geo-biosphere in function of people's needs. Therefore, as for any
governance issue, also governing anthropocentric global change is subject to
value-systems.
In a
fifth context, geoethical thinking means to extend the range of applied ethics
to new sub-jects: The overarching societal matters that relate to
anthropocentric global change are value-driven, e.g. how to appropriate and
distribute natural resources by whom and for what cost, whether to accepted
side-effects and risk of collateral damages. These matters are known ethical
issues. However, their complexity in the context of anthropocentric global
change has no precedent, because of the number of people with different needs,
diverse world-views and various preferences.
In
a sixth context, geoethical thinking is about how to take responsibility for
Earth system dynamics, in anyone's daily dealings: so far people did not intend
to modify planet Earth, although many were aware of the effects on the
biosphere of people's cumulative activities. Yet rather recently most people
had no insights into the intersection of human economic activity with the
geo-biosphere. Nowadays, having lost innocence, anthropocentric global change
is an intentional act, and its denial a liability.
Overlapping perimeters
The phase
of human history has ended during which anthropogenic global change has happened
unnoticed [Zalasiewicz 2015, Waters et al. 2016]. That insight has reached the
coastal ocean and the open sea [Durate 2014]. As an illustration, small-scale
fishery is one of many drivers of change. In this case the drive is through
cumulated actions of many actors across diverse social-economic and natural
environments, which happens within an external frame of a dominating industrialized
fishery and exploitation of the coastal zone by a multitude of other ac-tors.
The resulting complex 'system-to-be-governed' presents a set of wicked problems
[Jentoft and Chuenpagdee 2009], which in turn engulf wicked 'governing-systems'
too [Chuenpadgee and Jentoft 2013].
The
insight gained from small-scale fisheries within an industrialized
exploitation, thus one specific global change process, provides a metric for
the complexity of anthropogenic global change in general. It also emphasizes
the key-understanding that sustainable governance of peoples' activities at
planetary scales is a wicked problem, be it for small-scale fisheries [Jentoft
2014] or mitigation of climate change [Pollitt 2016]. Hence [Chuenpadgee and
Jentoft 2013, p. 344], 'overall values, norms and principles that guide
institutions and actions' set an essential meta-order to iterate the way
forward. Geoethical thinking is a contribution to develop such a meta-order for
appropriate behaviours and practices, wherever human activities interact with
the Earth system.
Summarizing,
once having lost innocence and such the citizen recognize anthropogenic global
change as its anthropocentric intentional act then ethical scrutiny of actions
is required. Under these circumstances, namely the perspective of an
anthropocentric Holocene or the Anthropocene, geoethical thinking is a shared
resource that deems helpful for the mutually respectful governance [Biermann
2014] of a sustainable planetary human niche for a global population of
billions of citizens.
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IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics
Biermann, F. (2014). Earth System Governance - World Politics in the Anthropocene. London: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1287hkh.
Bobrowsky, P., Cronin, V., Di Capua, G., Kieffer, S., Peppoloni, S. (2017). The emerging field of geoethics. In Gundersen L.C. (Ed.), Scientific Integrity and Eth-ics with Applications to the Geosciences (pp. xx–xx). John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
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Campbell, L. M., Gray, N. J., Fairbanks, L., Silver, J. J., Gruby, R. L., Dubik, B. A., & Basurto, X. (2016). Global Oceans Governance: New and Emerging Issues. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 41(1), 517–543. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurevenviron-102014-021121.
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Galaz, V., Moberg, F., Olsson, E.-K., Paglia, E., & Parker, C. (2011). Institutional and Political Leadership Dimensions of Cascading Ecological Crises. Public Administration, 89(2), 361–380. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01883.x.
Hamilton, C. (2017). Defiant Earth - The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Monastersky, R. (2015). Anthropocene: The human age. Nature, 519(7542), 144–147. article. https://doi.org/10.1038/519144a.
Newton, A., Carruthers, T. J. B., & Icely, J. (2012). The coastal syndromes and hotspots on the coast. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 96, 39–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2011.07.012.
Peppoloni, S., & Di Capua, G. (2016). Geoethics: Ethical, social, and cultural values in geo-sciences research, practice, and education. In Geological Society of America Special Papers (pp. 17–21). https://doi.org/10.1130/2016.2520(03).
Pollitt, C. (2016). Debate: Climate change—the ultimate wicked issue. Public Money & Man-agement, 36(2), 78–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2016.1118925.
Schimel, D., Hibbard, K., Costa, D., Cox, P., & Leeuw, S. Van Der. (2015). Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES): Advancing the post-disciplinary un-derstanding of coupled human–environment dynamics in the Anthropocene. Anthropo-cene, 12(2015), 99–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2016.02.001.
Seitzinger, S., Gaffney, O., Brasseur, G., Broadgate, W., Ciais, P., Claussen, M., Uematsu, M. (2015). International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and Earth system science: Three decades of co-evolution. Anthropocene, 12(2015), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2016.01.001.
Tickell, C. (2011). Societal responses to the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions. Series A, Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, 369(1938), 926–932. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0302.
Waters, C. N., Zalasiewicz, J., Summerhayes, C., Barnosky, A. D., Poirier, C., Ga uszka, A., Wolfe, A. P. (2016). The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene. Science, 351(6269), aad2622-aad2622. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad2622.
Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C. N., Williams, M., Barnosky, A. D., Cearreta, A., Crutzen, P., Oreskes, N. (2015). When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century bound-ary level is stratigraphically optimal. Quaternary International. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045.
IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics
