Abstract
The aquaculture industry in Norway currently represents 60% (US$ 5.4 billion) of Norwegian seafood exports. Of these, farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) represents over 80% (850,000 tonnes). These production levels are driven by a strong and growing demand for farmed fish, and has a stated political goal of increased growth by a factor of 5 by 2050 in Norway alone. However, growth is potentially more challenging without the public support and trust in the governance regime that regulates the industry. The theoretical framework of this paper rests on accountability theory, whereby the research team highlighted and tested the paradox between the ideal and the actual practices on a group of stakeholders representing the aquaculture industry and municipal, regional and sector management in northern Norway relative to their interactions and need thereof – versus the expectations of the public. The findings of a workshop were used to develop a conceptual model and test our theory on stakeholder driven future scenarios using a combination of systems thinking and fuzzy cognitive mapping. We found that stakeholders and management alike in a workshop setting valued flexibility of legislation and expert opinions highly, whereby regulatory standardization is not prioritized – in line with soft accountability. The industry acknowledged, though, that the public perception and negative media attention of the industry, in turn depended on hard accountability.
Highlights
Passing 7 billion people in 2012, the human population on earth is expected to reach 9 billion people in 2050 (Garcia and Rosenberg, 2010; United Nations, 2014), with the resultant need for increased nourishment
The municipality emphasized that this was not exclusive to the aquaculture industry though. They argued that they experienced that they themselves at all times were portrayed in the media as working excessively slow, and that they were considered a hinder for the process for the aquaculture industry
The time limits, they emphasized, were sometimes unrealistic and attributed to the fact that they did have applications for aquaculture localities on their desk. This was seconded by the representative from the Norwegian food safety authority, a sector authority with a decision power to veto aquaculture applications when the application runs counter to either the Law of food production and food safety (Lovdata.no, 2004) or the Law of animal welfare (Lovdata.no, 2010). This representative was in agreement with comments about media concentrating on the negative cases, and explained that more often than not, when media contacted them for access to documents related to an inspection, they never asked for positive examples
Summary
Passing 7 billion people in 2012, the human population on earth is expected to reach 9 billion people in 2050 (Garcia and Rosenberg, 2010; United Nations, 2014), with the resultant need for increased nourishment. Marine locations for farms require excellent water quality and constant temperatures to ensure low mortalities and maximum profitability This is critical to minimize the environmental impact of the farms on the surrounding natural environment. A total of 276 out of 428 Norwegian municipalities (64%) border directly on the coastal waters (Statistics Norway, 2009), and as many as 80% of the Norwegian population live within
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