Transforming fisheries governance: A collaborative approach to sustainable fisheries and food security
Short description
Sustainable fisheries governance requires the involvement of local and regional stakeholders to enable coastal fisheries’ potential for societal value-creation and national food security. This project explores how bottom-up knowledge and capacities can be connected with national decision making in today’s top-down Swedish fisheries governance system. Through partnerships with regional stakeholders and interactive workshops with multiple actors from different levels, the project will identify barriers and opportunities for a more inclusive governance system. In the short term, it supports mutual learning; in the long term, it aims to influence future fisheries policy and management directions and inspire broader sustainability transitions.
Research project members
- Sebastian Linke, University of Gothenburg
- Ida Wingren, Lund University
- Madeleine Lundin, Simrishamn Municipality, Marint Centrum
- Vesa Tschernij, Simrishamn Municipality, Marint Centrum
Background
This project transfers existing knowledge from academia for practical experimental application in processes of increased involvement of regional and local stakeholders in fisheries management in Sweden. Research shows that sustainable fisheries management, including coastal fisheries’ contribution to national food security requires more involvement to include local perspectives and be adaptive to varying contexts. This project will explore and showcase the societal value-adding capacity of Swedish fisheries management by identifying barriers and opportunities for increased local and regional involvement of stakeholders.
Aim
The goal of the project is to explore how an alternative governance approach can deliver societal benefits by enabling the value-adding capacity of coastal fisheries for a resilient, safe and sustainably food provision. When less fish can create more socioeconomic value through local landings and processing, this will not only benefit place-based development and facilitate local employment but also strengthen national food security in times of war and crises. This requires a more diverse fishing fleet and a governance system, which can react to both, ecological and societal changes.
Novelty of results and impact
The results and activities of our project aim to deliver novel insights and experiences on the missing links for collaborative nested governance of Swedish fisheries. Hitherto the policy objectives for fisheries, both in Sweden, the EU and globally, have not delivered desired results. Overarching management objectives for EU and Swedish fisheries, like Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), focus primarily on bio-economic aspects and thus impair opportunities and arenas for combining different interests, goals, sectors, scales and stakes. To improve the situation of Swedish fisheries, governance innovations are needed at the level of institutions so that they can deliver more participation, consultation and collaboration as necessities for change. Our project therefore interrogates which alterations of actor roles are needed e.g. for institutions, organisations and administrations to enable such change.
While the short-term impact of the project is to exchange knowledge and experiences for mutual learning in our meeting places, the long-term aim is to produce results that can impact on changes for Swedish fisheries governance and eventually also inspire other sectors, countries and society at large on how to revert existing unsustainable management for transformations to sustainability.