Fish farmers and regulators coping with the wickedness of aquaculture

ABSTRACT

Managing and regulating aquaculture is a complicated issue. From the perspective of fish farmers as well as regulators managing aquaculture can be regarded as what political scientists refer to as a “wicked problem.” This is because there is a great extent of uncertainty and lack of firm knowledge with respect to the externalities of aquaculture production; e.g., diseases, environmental impacts, and conflicts with other user interests. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of the aquaculture sector contributes to the uncertainty as new solutions emerge, rendering established knowledge obsolete or irrelevant. Designing appropriate public regulations and policy measures is thus important, but difficult. Based on empirical data from Norway, we investigate what respondents from public agencies and the industry perceive to be challenges in governing aquaculture and what we may infer on the characteristics of a good governance approach. We propose that such an approach needs to focus on building competence, collaboration, and be adaptable. Furthermore, it needs to be flexible and cost efficient.

KEYWORDS:

• Aquaculture
• externalities
• fish farmers
• governance model
• regulators
• wicked problems

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Notes

Although there have been a number of studies investigating the two most common sources of economic uncertainty, production uncertainty (Tveteras, 1999) and price uncertainty (Oglend, 2013; Dahl & Oglend, 2014) and price uncertainty can now be handled at organized markets (Asche et al., 2016), there has been limited focus on other sources of uncertainty such as regulatory uncertainty.

In a recent book, Roe (2013) uses the term policy messes to address such problems, interestingly suggesting that one should learn to manage them, for example by developing trans-organizational networks of professionals.

Aquaculture can also cause positive externalities such as reduced fishing pressure on wild stocks (Anderson, 1985), stock enhancement (Klinger et al., 2013) and improved economic and social stability (Asche et al., 2016).

Both interviews and our recently conducted media discourse analysis (Olsen & Osmundsen, 2017; Osmundsen & Olsen, 2017) suggest that there is a rather weak distinction between different producers in the public perception of the industry.

For more about the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) see www.asc-aqua.org and bap.gaalliance.org, respectively. Ecolabelling in aquaculture is also discussed in Bush et al. (2013).