Ethical Reflections on the Food from the Oceans Report
Abstract
There is a global narrative that the world population is growing and that the only way to feed the global population by, say, 2050, is to increase the production of seafood, given the physical limits of agriculture and climate... [ view full abstract ]
There is a global narrative that the world population is growing and that the only way to feed the global population by, say, 2050, is to increase the production of seafood, given the physical limits of agriculture and climate impact of livestock. At the end of 2016, the EU Commissioner Bella therefore requested scientific advice on the following question: ”How can more food and biomass be obtained from the oceans in a way that does not deprive future generations of their benefits?” An international group of appointed experts – the current presenter among them - submitted its answer November 2017. This presentation shall focus on the societal and ethical challenges that were identified in the official report. Indeed, while some biological potential for increased harvesting from the oceans was identified, the report also states the societal, cultural and ethical challenges as the greatest bottlenecks for further growth. So-called licences-to-operate are in many countries of the industrialized world hard to come by. Kaiser sees the reasons for this in the neglect of holistic and social science perspectives in still dominating discourses on seafood, in the ideological focus on what is believed to be value-free and objective science, and he promotes a post-normal view on scientific knowledge production. The paper is meant to be thought provoking rather than reporting on specific research.
Authors
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Matthias Kaiser
(University of Bergen)
Topic Areas
Topics: Fisheries, aquaculture, and the oceans , Topics: Marine food security , Topics: Marine policy
Session
S-210 » Seafood Ethics: Moving Beyond Sustainable Management to Ethical Governance (10:00 - Thursday, 28th June, Tubau 2 & 3)