Fisheries: A Case Study of Baltic Sea Environmental Governance

Abstract

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.