Abstract
A growing body of critical social-scientific scholarship addresses the implications of marine spatial planning for those who depend on the ocean for their livelihood, sustenance, well-being and cultural survival. Of particular concern are planning initiatives that construct marine space in ways that negate or contradict its particular materiality, the latter holding great significance for how different actors relate to the ocean. In response, scholars are turning towards relational conceptualisations of marine space, focusing on the relationships between human and non-human actors, as well as the factors that mediate them. Here, we argue that legal geography, a strand of interdisciplinary research that explores how space, law and society are co-constituted, can make a valuable contribution to this discussion. In taking seriously the connections between the themes law as discourse, law as representation and law as power, legal geography offers a deeper understanding of the subjectivities, narratives and sources of normativity made in/visible by the legal dimensions of planning frameworks. Using the legal-geographical concept of spatial justice as our frame of reference, we posit that the relational materiality of the ocean lends itself to the socio-legal construction of marine spaces as ‘commons’, i.e. as pluralist spaces where different knowledges and ways of being coexist and intermingle, and where well-being is perceived in composite, socio-natural terms. This allows us to problematise marine spatial planning, along with its normative, regulatory and institutional underpinnings, as a vehicle for the enclosure of not only marine spaces but also spaces of decision-making.
Highlights
The last few years have seen a growing body of critical social-scientific scholarship addressing the implications of marine spatial planning (MSP) for those who depend on the ocean for their livelihood, sustenance, well-being and cultural survival
Of particular concern are planning initiatives which construct marine space in such a way as to negate or contradict its particular materiality, the latter holding great significance for how different actors relate to the ocean (Lavau 2013)
As noted by Mikalsen and Jentoft (2001: 285), the nature of the ocean as a ‘commons’ and of marine resources as ‘public’ is not merely a statement of truth, but “a normative utterance” with ethical and institutional implications, alluding to a life beyond marketisation and commercialisation. This raises a number of compelling questions for the MSP community: by whom, to what end, to whose benefit and in whose interest are the marine commons being spatially managed? What the present study has sought to demonstrate is that critical legal scholarship has a valuable contribution to make in this debate, with law providing an important backdrop for interrogating practices of commoning and enclosure
Summary
The last few years have seen a growing body of critical social-scientific scholarship addressing the implications of marine spatial planning (MSP) for those who depend on the ocean for their livelihood, sustenance, well-being and cultural survival. This leads MSP processes to rely on “proprietary”, capital-intensive mapping practices, which approach knowledge not as a good to be co-produced and shared, but as capital to be channelled towards neoliberal intentionalities (Olson 2010: 299) In view of these shortcomings, it appears necessary to interrogate the use of cartographic evidence in combination with legal concepts and principles as a basis for making technocratic, purportedly rational decisions regarding the spatiotemporal distribution of human activities in marine areas. Marine cadastres provide an authoritative delimitation of the documented rights’ spatial scope, employing maps and other visual aids to situate them in relation to maritime zones and boundaries, area-based management measures and a wide array of natural and artificial features (Ehler and Douvere 2009: 61) The latter example offers further illustration of how law’s representational tools can be used to enclose marine space in ways that sit uncomfortably with the ocean’s material realities (the ebbs and flows of its tides and swells, the forces of its currents, the movement of species), not to mention the realities facing coastal communities. Law must ensure that the agency of the knowledge-holders is respected, and create enabling conditions for them to occupy a more prominent seat at the negotiating table
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