Introduction

In chapter 2, the challenges facing fisheries and aquaculture were briefly described. The crucial issue pointed out is that the drivers for increasing fish production are ubiquitous, multifarious, and strong and that they surpass the capacity of available management systems. The result is a consistent over-demand on natural and social systems and a crisis in fisheries as well as in fisheries governance.

We connected the drivers in fisheries to the globalisation that has been accelerating since 1950.With the sharp rise in the international demand for fish products and the growing connection between local producers and global markets, the pressure to increase production has also grown and new market players have emerged in response. This has resulted in investments and industrialisation in capture fisheries in the North and South alike, and in the growth of aquaculture.

We then identified four concerns that have emerged from the societal debate on fisheries across the globe. Concerns differ from principles in that they do not materialise from systematic top-to-bottom analyses but from political discussions from the bottom up – they constitute fields of attention as well as measuring devices for the results of governance effort. The concerns we presented are 1) ecosystem health, 2) social justice, 3) livelihood and employment, and 4) food security and safety. Each is important to large categories of people now and in the future. Significantly, most of the people affected by the failure to address these concerns live in the South. It is important to note that concerns are related to different population categories in time as well as in space. Ecosystem health is of special importance to future generations, but livelihood and employment and food security are relevant to present ones. Livelihood and employment pertain to people who work in and obtain their income from the fish chain, and food security and safety to the much broader category of the rural and urban poor. Social justice has implications for people at all scale levels, both present and future alike.

We have examined fisheries governance in this volume from many perspectives, dividing the analysis into three parts. The first addresses the constitution and workings of the fish chain, the second the regulatory institutions at various levels from local to international, and the third the principles that actually and those that should underlie fisheries governance.