Responsible Governing of Coastal Common Resources in the North

Abstract

"This paper synthesizes the major findings from two international comparative research programs under the auspices of the European Union. One of these projects, the COASTMAN project, has analyzed the institutional foundations of Northern Coastal Commons and the experiences with newly crafted institutions for Integrated Coastal Zone Management. The other project, the ELSA-PECHE project, has analyzed the attitudes to ecosystem responsibility and other ethical questions in Norway, Iceland and Denmark.

"By bringing together an institutional analysis approach and a normative analysis of prevailing ethical attitudes, the paper will attempt to penetrate deeper into the constitutional basis for both the coastal management regimes and the fisheries management regimes of Northern Waters. The forces of change are quite similar in the two regimes, and akin to the overall modernization processes in the rest of society. In fisheries this has resulted in individualized quota systems that tend to break down the fishing communities and the moral collectivity of fishermen. But coastal fisheries are also influenced by developments in other kinds of coastal resource utilization, especially a slow transfer from species/population management models to more territorially based modern sea-tenure system. This often lands them into a squeeze between a drive for further rationalization and increased restrictions on their mobility and freedom to use sea areas.

"On the other hand, territorially based modernization forces are found in the logic of aquaculture growth and growth in sea ranching and the growing of shellfish and mussels on the seabed. While the traditional institutions of the Coastal Commons withered away under the heavy influence of sectoral rationality, new institutions for a more integrated kind of 'Ecosystem Commons' have to be crafted as the growth of area consuming marine resource transformation increase in total occupancy and in economic importance to coastal communities. In addition, a development of bio-ethics and principles of ecosystem responsibility takes place parallel to the technological shifts in marine resource utilization. These can be either lagging behind or advancing ahead of the development of new forms of production. The paper analyses these shifts in normative basis for the changing institutions and outline the need for a new normative basis for crafting new kinds of institutions for governing Coastal and Marine common resources in the North."