Doctoral Dissertation Research: Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management

Cuny Graduate School University Center, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project analyzes the governance of the New England groundfish fishery through the emergence of Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management (EBFM), focusing on how science and management function together in a network of ecological, social, and economic relationships. Despite the application of the best science available to guide management practices, stock assessments for several species are at record lows and socioeconomic impacts are rippling through the sector. A transition from management based on single stock assessments to EBFM, which takes into account the biophysical dynamics of the marine environment and incorporates socio-ecological dimensions into conceptualization of the ecosystem, is an opportunity to address interrelated and underrepresented fishery processes. Among supporters of EBFM, tensions exist about the best way to move forward because stakeholders analyze the fishery in different ways depending on their roles and their epistemological approaches to understanding the fishery. Scientific uncertainty, rapidly changing environmental conditions, and variable market dynamics require participatory and adaptive management strategies that reconcile disciplinary and epistemological divisions. This project will identify areas where conflicting epistemologies are straining collaboration and action and determine ways to attenuate or resolve these conflicts. It will provide insights into the contradictions that hinder understanding and areas where economic, social, and conservation agendas potentially converge. Although this research aims to capture the complexity of the New England groundfish fishery specifically, it has potential to provide insights for the management of similar fishery crises throughout the world. Further, this work has implications for implementation of ecosystems based management paradigms more generally. This project addresses three overarching research questions: 1) How do ongoing scientific and social processes, based on the emergence of EBFM, construct the ecosystem as a category for governance? 2) How do place-specific ecological, social, and economic relationships mediate and produce outcomes from the processes and practices of fisheries science and management? 3) How can this analysis advance our understanding of natural resource policy and management? Through ethnography and discourse analysis, this research examines the spaces where actors come together to produce management plans and will utilize observations of management and research lab meetings, interviews with fisheries scientists, and contextualized evaluation of popular media, industry publications, management plans, and legislation. The analysis integrates methods from political ecology and political economy, Socio-ecological Systems (SES) theory and the Global Production Networks approach to analyze the coupling of ecological and social-economic systems within the fisheries sector.