Sebastian Linke

The Regional Advisory Councils: What is Their Potential to Incorporate Stakeholder Knowledge into Fisheries Governance?

The protection of the Baltic Sea ecosystem is exacerbated by the social, environmental and economic complexities of governing European fisheries. Increased stakeholder participation and knowledge integration are suggested to improve the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), suffering from legitimacy, credibility and compliance problems. As a result, the CFP was revised in 2002 to involve fisheries representatives, NGOs and other stakeholders through so called Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) in the policy process. We address the RAC’s task to incorporate stakeholder knowledge into the EU’s fisheries governance system in empirical and theoretical perspectives. Drawing on a four-stage governance concept we subsequently suggest that a basic problem is a mismatch between participation purpose (knowledge inclusion) and the governance stage at which RACs are formally positioned (evaluation of management proposals). We conclude that, if the aim is to broaden the knowledge base of fisheries management, stakeholders need to be included earlier in the governance process.

Unravelling science-policy interactions in environmental risk governance of the Baltic Sea : Comparing fisheries and eutrophication

Interactions between scientific assessments and management decision-making are key determinants for the efficiency of environmental risk governance. This applies particularly to marine ecosystems like the Baltic Sea, where fisheries and eutrophication pose serious threats connected to environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability. Using contemporary science-policy theory, this paper investigates structures, challenges and prospects of science-policy interfaces connected to fisheries and eutrophication governance in the Baltic Sea. We analyse and compare the two cases with respect to two aspects: first the design and organisational structures of the institutional frameworks and second the management of uncertainties and stakeholder disagreements in the two risk cases. The analyses reveal how conventional natural science-based policy-making is insufficient for the requirements of complex environmental governance arenas like fisheries and eutrophication. Both cases show a high, almost exclusive, dependence on science-based advice regarding the organisational and institutional structures of their science-policy interfaces. They also expose remarkable differences with respect to stakeholder disagreements about the interplay between science, other knowledge and policy decisions. In the eutrophication case, consensual science-based advice shaped policy decisions in a comparatively uncomplicated manner. In fisheries by contrast, stakeholder disagreements and different interpretations of scientific uncertainties created serious confusions about the basic role of science in policy. We identify and discuss factors contributing to the observed differences in the science-policy interplay of fisheries and eutrophication management. Our results highlight a misleading conceptual understanding of science-policy interfaces between the normative idea of objective, science-based policy-making and the political challenges of dealing with the social aspects of uncertainty and stakeholder disagreements in environmental risk governance.

Ideals, realities and paradoxes of stakeholder participation in EU fisheries governance

A participatory turn towards more democratic policy-making and decision-making that involves stakeholders has occurred in EU environmental governance since roughly 2000. Despite ubiquitous emphases in favour of ‘good governance principles’, we still know little about their effects in concrete settings where stakeholders are involved in policy and management. Two recent reforms of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy introduced stakeholder participation via so-called Advisory Councils (ACs). This involved establishing a system for stakeholder representation in these organisations. This paper shows how democratic ideals that emphasise including stakeholders in environmental governance such as fisheries become constrained – or even reversed – by the realities of stakeholder representation procedures. Our theoretical discussion refers to tensions between democratic ideals and the effective organisation of stakeholder participation through representation, emphasising constraints on participation and what may be lost or gained through the selection processes that representation involves. Our empirical study of the Baltic Sea AC shows how unresolved problems regarding representation create legitimacy issues, which are associated with the AC system in general and which we argue ultimately reduce such organisations’ opportunities to contribute to a more progressive and sustainable environmental governance.

Environmental Governance of the Baltic Sea

This edited volume presents a comprehensive and coherent interdisciplinary analysis ofchallenges and possibilities for sustainable governance of the Baltic Sea ecosystem bycombining knowledge and a ...

Fisheries: A Case Study of Baltic Sea Environmental Governance

This chapter analyses environmental governance through a case study of fisheries management in the Baltic Sea and investigates the problems, challenges and opportunities for improving sustainability in this sector. Fisheries management in the Baltic Sea is politically and culturally complex, institutionally fragmented and confronted with serious environmental problems, such as recent shifts in cod stocks. The central challenge is therefore to establish a regionally based, ecologically sustainable and socio-economically viable fisheries governance system for the Baltic Sea. Our analysis is focused on how past and current reform processes of fisheries management in the Baltic Sea have been able to move away from the path-dependent and highly ineffective management system linked to EU’s Common Fisheries Policy towards new regional arrangements and procedures that address environmental problems in the Baltic on par with the social and economic challenges. We first describe existing governance structures for fisheries management in the Baltic Sea and their role in procedures of knowledge production, policy advice and decision-making. We then examine how the different governance actors (i.e. scientists, stakeholders, policymakers) address key issues such as the framing of the ‘overfishing problem’, the handling of uncertainty in the interactions of risk assessment and risk management and the role of stakeholder participation and communication. The chapter concludes by emphasising the need for an improved understanding of how scientific developments and connected uncertainty problems, policy constraints and stakeholder perspectives can be brought together for improving the biological, ecological and socio-economic sustainability of Baltic Sea fisheries governance.

Environmental Governance of the Baltic Sea: Identifying Key Challenges, Research Topics and Analytical Approaches

The Baltic Sea ecosystem is subject to a wide array of societal pressures and associated environmental risks (e.g. eutrophication, oil discharges, chemical pollution, overfishing and invasive alien species). Despite several years of substantial efforts by state and non-state actors, it is still highly unlikely that the regionally agreed environmental objectives of reaching “good environmental status” by 2021 in the HELCOM BSAP (Baltic Sea Action Plan) and by 2020 in the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) will be met. This chapter identifies key research topics, as well as presents analytical perspectives for analysing the gap between knowledge and action in Baltic Sea environmental governance. It does so by outlining important trends and key challenges associated with Baltic Sea environmental governance, as well as by summarising the scope and results of individual chapters of this interdisciplinary volume. The analysis reveals the development of increasingly complex governance arrangements and the ongoing implementation of the holistic Ecosystem Approach to Management, as two general trends that together contribute to three key challenges associated with (1) regional and cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration, (2) coping with complexity and uncertainty in science-policy interactions and (3) developing communication and knowledge sharing among stakeholder groups. Furthermore, to facilitate analysis of environmental governance opportunities and obstacles both within and across specific environmental issues, this chapter reviews the scientific literature to pinpoint key research issues and questions linked to the identified governance challenges.

Science-Policy Interfaces in Baltic Sea Environmental Governance: Towards Regional Cooperation and Management of Uncertainty?

This chapter investigates and compares the interactions between science and policy (risk assessments and risk management) in five cases of environmental governance of the Baltic Sea: eutrophication, fisheries, invasive alien species, chemical pollution and oil discharges. An efficient interplay between science and policy is important for successful environmental governance, which applies particularly to the Baltic Sea where all five risks pose serious threats to environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability. We use science-policy theory and an analytical framework based on a categorisation of relevant management responses linked to different states of incomplete knowledge (risk, uncertainty, ambiguity, ignorance) to investigate two main characteristics of science-policy interfaces: (1) organisational structures and (2) procedural aspects of managing scientific uncertainties and stakeholder disagreements. The analyses reveal differences and similarities in institutional and organisational designs of the respective assessment-management interactions, as well as in terms of how scientific uncertainties, stakeholder disagreements and sociopolitical ambiguities are addressed. All the five science-policy interfaces expose science-based management approaches that commonly are not able to cope sufficiently well with the complexities, uncertainties and ambiguities at hand. Based on our cross-case analyses, we conclude by recommending five key aspects that need to be addressed to improve science-policy interactions in Baltic Sea environmental governance: (1) more adaptive organisational structures in terms of time, context and place dependency, (2) increased knowledge integrations, (3) a more careful consideration of stakeholder participation and deliberation, (4) better management of uncertainty and disagreements and (5) increased transparency and reflection in the communication of science-policy processes.

The legitimization of concern: A flexible framework for investigating the enactment of stakeholders in environmental planning and governance processes

From the 1990s and onwards, environmental planning and governance has undergone a broad participatory turn. This paper focuses on one specific aspect of participatory processes and the concrete arrangements through which they are carried out, more specifically: how such processes always come to enact some actors as ‘legitimately concerned’ stakeholders and others not. Such investigations bring into focus context-specific effects of inclusion and exclusion as well as de/legitimization of specific actors and concerns. We propose a flexible framework for untangling the various components which in different ways influence the fine-grained power dynamics at play in such events, particularly focusing on the enactments of stakeholders that result from the situated interplay of rationales and infrastructures for participation. The guiding ambitions for the framework is for it to be applicable to a broad range of subfields of environmental planning and governance while avoiding the analytical risks of strong normative commitments from the outset regarding whether participation per se is good or bad, and offering some novel insights into the investigated cases. Throughout the paper, we utilize two case studies, from urban planning and fisheries management, to test the analytical productivity of the proposed framework while also searching for cues for the further development of the framework itself.

Contexts constrain science in the public: How the sociobiology debate was (not) presented in the German press.

This article reports on a media study on the coverage of sociobiology (SB) in the German media. The analyses show a decoupling between the academic discussion and the German media coverage: when the scientific debates about SB were at their height (late 1970s), nearly no reporting occurred in the German press, whereas from the middle of the 1990s onwards, when the academic discussion had settled, SB was presented increasingly often. The case reveals the importance of cultural contexts in shaping popular science coverage, making SB a non-issue in the German media at the times of its most intense scientific debate. Factors contributing to this particular situation in German academia and popular culture are discussed. Comparisons with other studies show how the late renaissance of SB in Germany in the late 1990s is due to media attention towards the new biosciences.

Addressing social sustainability for small-scale fisheries in Sweden: Institutional barriers for implementing the small-scale fisheries guidelines.

Swedish coastal fisheries are not sustainable in terms of the status of their main fish stocks, their economic profitability, and as source of regular employment. Social sustainability commitments in fisheries governance advocated by the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines) have been so far mostly neglected. In this chapter, we bring attention to two institutional settings at different governance levels relevant for the implementation of the SSF Guidelines in the Swedish context. First, we look at the introduction of social goals under the perspective of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Second, we consider national tensions between forces advocating or opposing a further application of market-based economic instruments, often portrayed as an effective cure for all ills, in fisheries governance. Taking into account the logic on which the SSF Guidelines rest, we evaluate in both cases current processes for stakeholder participation in the formulation of fishing policies and strategies in Sweden. We conclude that the inclusion of a social dimension and stakeholder involvement at the EU level face procedural and institutional limitations that prevent the small-scale fisheries sector from exploiting opportunities for change. Further challenges to the implementation of the SSF Guidelines arise when central national authorities’ interpretation of societal benefits opposes other interpretations, and consequently economic calculations take precedence over a participatory process-based, knowledge-accumulating approach to resource management. The SSF Guidelines, therefore, provide important material and intellectual resources to make the most of new chances that can lead to an increased likelihood of change in the direction of sustainable coastal fisheries in Sweden.