Serving the industry or undermining the regulatory system? The use of special purpose licenses in Norwegian salmon aquaculture

Bjørn Hersoug,Marit Schei Olsen,Asle Årthun Gauteplass,Tonje C Osmundsen,Frank Asche

doi:10.1016/j.aquaculture.2021.736918

Abstract

Aquaculture governance can be challenging as a number of stakeholders have different objectives and visions for the industry. A license is an important tool in ensuring an orderly development of an industry, providing rights as well as obligations. However, the constraints imposed by a license can also prevent desirable activities. In the Norwegian aquaculture industry this has been addressed by creating special purpose license to promote some activities such as education and research, but which are operated in collaboration with commercial farms. While these licenses are not regarded as a part of the industry's regulatory system, the paper shows that that this can be a challenge as 17% of the current production capacity is in the form of special purpose licenses. This raises the questions of how well the special purpose license achieve their objectives or whether they undermine the regulatory system. This challenge is particularly pertinent in an industry with high profitability and strong barriers to further growth.

Highlights

The rapid increase in global aquaculture production raises complex governance issues, as it affects a range of policy areas, including rural or coastal development, use of natural resources, animal welfare, as well as international trade and food supply (Belton et al, 2020a, 2020b)
In the Norwegian aquaculture industry this has been addressed by creating special purpose license to promote some activities such as education and research, but which are operated in collaboration with commercial farms
While these licenses are not regarded as a part of the industry's regulatory system, the paper shows that that this can be a challenge as 17% of the current production capacity is in the form of special purpose licenses

Summary

Introduction

The rapid increase in global aquaculture production raises complex governance issues, as it affects a range of policy areas, including rural or coastal development, use of natural resources, animal welfare, as well as international trade and food supply (Belton et al, 2020a, 2020b). The governance system has strong impacts on the develop ment of the aquaculture industry in terms of production and which technologies are used (Abate et al, 2016; Anderson et al, 2019). An aquaculture license will typically provide a right to produce fish (or another aquatic organism) at some geographical location, and may contain limitations such as how much can be produced, on discharges or which production technologies can be used. Such instruments are perceived as robust regulations and as central to a good stewardship of the marine environment (Davies et al, 2019). The effectiveness of a licensing regime will, depend on its objectives as well as the extent to which it is enforced and supported, and this gets harder as the number of objectives increase (Osmundsen et al, 2017; Abate et al, 2018). Guillen et al (2019) and Lamprakis et al (2021) provide an interesting overview of EU aquaculture governance, showing how different parts of the governance system have different and sometime conflicting objectives

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Discussion

Conclusion