Mainstreaming Equity and Justice in the Ocean.

Abstract

Equity and justice considerations have risen to the surface in policy deliberations, management decisions, and program design related to marine conservation, fisheries management, and blue economy development. These topics have been brought to the forefront by academic documentation of social justice and distributional issues across these different marine policy realms (Kittinger et al., 2017; Cohen et al., 2019; Martin et al., 2019; Armstrong, 2020; Bennett et al., 2021a) and coinciding civil society efforts to raise the profile of the social injustices facing small-scale fishers, coastal communities, different genders, and diverse racial and ethnic groups (Isaacs, 2019; Johnson, 2020; Gustavsson et al., 2021). Academic and civil society groups and individuals have coined a number of catch phrases to refer to the relationship between equity, justice, and the oceans - including blue justice, marine justice, ocean justice and ocean equity (Martin et al., 2019; Armstrong, 2020; Österblom et al., 2020; Bennett et al., 2021a). Small-scale fisheries organizations, for example, coined the now popular term ‘blue justice’ to refer to the effects of blue growth and industrial fisheries on the rights, resources and livelihoods of small-scale fishers and coastal communities (Cohen et al., 2019; Isaacs, 2019; Bennett et al., 2021a; Jentoft et al., 2022). Scholars also recently proposed ‘marine justice’ as an academic concept, a paradigm, and a movement that merges concerns for the marine environment and environmental justice (Widener, 2018; Martin et al., 2019). The idea of ‘ocean equity’ emerged in a 2020 report of the High Level Panel on the Sustainable Ocean Economy titled ‘Towards Ocean Equity’ that highlighted the need for the burgeoning ocean economy to be inclusive and account for equity in the distribution of benefits (Bennett et al., 2019b; Österblom et al., 2020). Marine biologist and conservationist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson uses the phrase ‘ocean justice’ to underscore the importance of paying attention to climate justice and racial justice issues in ocean conservation (Johnson, 2020).

While somewhat different in their history and formulation, the proponents behind each of these catch phrases share a common concern for the need to urgently address emergent equity and justice issues in ocean governance and management. This growing interest in equity and justice in the oceans is positive progress from just a few years ago when these topics were still peripheral in ocean policy deliberations and insufficiently considered in programs and funding focused on oceans and sustainability (Bennett, 2018). Globally, many ocean-focused conservation and development government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and funders have become quite interested in how to embed and operationalize equity and justice in their work (Österblom et al., 2020; Bennett et al., 2021b). Yet, these organizations still often lack the foundational knowledge, mandate, capacity, and diversity to be able to adequately account for and address equity and justice issues. This opinion editorial provides six recommendations for how marine conservation and development organizations can establish a strong internal foundation for mainstreaming equity and justice issues in external marine policies, programs, practices and portfolios.