rethinking sustainable fisheries: the realist paradigm

Rethinking Sustainable Fihsks: The Realist Paradigm

Ian Drummond and David Symes*

TEMPTS AT FISHERIES management within the European Union provide A a telling commentary on the idea of sustainable development and the ways in which this concept has been appropriated and applied by policy makers. Sus- tainability has been an explicit goal of fisheries management within the EU for some time, but the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has not even provided for resource sustainability let alone the broader social, economic and moral dimen- sions. Fisheries are not unique in this respect. Indeed they are quite typical of the general case where sustainable development is increasingly seen as an insub stantial concept which embodies little practical utility.

Most current approaches to sustainability revolve around attempts to &fine and subsequently police some form of ‘sustainability limits’ (Owens 1994). Fisheries are a case in point, with bio-economic theory and maximum sustainable yield playing a central role in policy formulation. The all too apparent lack of progress towards sustainable development within fisheries and elsewhere testifies that such approaches are inadequate. The problem is not simply that they tend to be technocratic, reactive and partial. The approach is fundamental- ly ill-conceived.

Policies which attempt to address unsustainable events and practices directly will frequently degenerate into what Redclift terms ‘environmental managerialism,’ something which:

. . . begins with problems and attempts to solve them in a more ud k, piecemeal fashion. The par- is a positivist one, that assumes responsibility for resolving issues with whatever technical means are at our +d. Thus the armoury of environmental managerialism consists of different methodological techniques, each of which enables the environment to be better ‘managed.’ This is the shallow end of the ‘deep’ ecological swimming pool (Re& 1988, p. 638).

*School of Geography and Earth Resources, The University of Hull, Hull, UK. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge. MA 02142. USA.

Q 1996 European Society for Rural Sociology. Sociologia Ruralis Volume 36, No. 2, 1996

ISSN 0038-0199

Rethinking sustainable fuberies 153

By working backwards from the bottom line of biologically defined sustainability metrics, approaches of this type fail to respect either the multi-dimen- sional nature of sustainable development or the need for truly integral solutions which this implies. Such approaches tend to conceptualize the situation in terms of a line, on one side of which lies sustainability but beyond which lies unsustainability. The problem is not so much that any definition of this line is technically difficult, uncertain and contestable, although fisheries management clearly demonstrates that in practice it frequently is. Neither is the fact that the optimal position of any such line would probably vary through time the key problem. The fundamental problem lies in the fact that asking where, precisely, the line should be placed is the wrong question. The important question is why the line will tend to be crossed wherever it is drawn. Policy must move beyond treating unsustainable practices and events as discrete occurrences to a situation where they are addressed as outcomes of economic and social processes and the conditions in which they occur.

Approaches which begin from this position, have the distinct advantage that they largely circumvent the need for any precise definition of what sustainable development is. This is important because the ambiguous nature of the concept has proved to be a major obstacle to its realization in practice. What is crucially significant from this perspective, however, is the way in which the causality of unsustainable practices and events is understood. Understanding why overly exploitive and degrading practices come about and how they are able to achieve their own social and political legitimacy may well be the key to progressing both the theory and practice of sustainable development. This paper attempts to develop this agenda by drawing on insights from two strands of social theory: realism and regulation theory. Realism provides a basis for understanding the causality of unsustainable events. Regulation theory is concerned with the contradictions and crises which emerge within capitalist economies and the ways in which these are addressed by society. Implicitly, it is concerned with why and how some aspects of development are sustained whilst others are devalued and degraded.

The causality of unsustainable practices and events

From a realist perspective, events are understood as outcomes which reflect both tendentially expressed causal mechanisms and contingent conditions. According to Outhwaite (1987, p. 19) realism "takes seriously the existence of things, structures and mechanisms revealed by the sciences at different levels of reality." Bhaskar (1975) identifies three such levels or domains. The domain of the actual encompasses events which are concrete and directly observable. These events are experienced and interpreted at an empirical level. The domain of the real comprises objects and structures which may or may not be directly observable but which are nevertheless real in that they give rise to mechanisms which can be significant in the causality of events.

154 Drummond and Symes

Realism does not suggest that objects and structures act directly to cause events. Rather causality is understood in terms of tendencies which may or may not be ‘realized’ in practice. Objects have, or are part of, structures which produce causal mechanisms. Outcomes may well besubject to complex patterns of causation involving plural and possibly countervalent causal mechanisms. Contingent factors will influence whether or not a particular mechanism produces a particular event. Crucially, however, this is a two stage argument the effects do not just depend on contingent factors; the outcomes produced also depend on whether or not the mechanisms involved are ‘activated’ (Sayer 1984). The fact that mechanisms may or may not be ‘activated’ is central to understanding not only why unsustainable events occur, but also how they might be avoided.

If we accept that prevention of the unsustainable is a fundamental goal of sustainable development, then a realist understanding of the causality acquires considerable significance. The multi-level conceptual framework provided by a realist analysis signifies and elucidates a range of moments where policy might be targeted. The most obvious approach is to intervene directly at the level of contingency. But this usually occurs in practice, not least in fisheries management. Faced with a particular crisis new regulations are introduced or old ones strengthened. However, while intervention at this level may prevent a particular event occurring at a particular time and in a particular place, the tendency remains and is likely to be expressed elsewhere. Controlling fishing effort in one place is likely to redirect the effort to other species, other locations or other times. This approach is analogous to treating a patient’s symptoms rather than the disease. It may appear to be pragmatic and capable of producing results, but it is at best partial and temporary (Drummond and Marsden 1995).

An alternative approach would be to address the temhcy involved rather than the outcomes produced. Two fundamental questions arise. What are the objects and structures which give rise to the tendency to the unsustainable? How can this tendency be moderated? Taking a realist stance suggests the need to explore relationships between unsustainable outcomes and the often unobser- vable but nevertheless influential structures and mechanisms which underpin these events (Sayer 1984). In this way it may well be possible to develop an appreciation of which objects and mechanisms are significant in the causality of unsustainable events. In practice, it may be possible to remove or transform them. This is not necessarily the most appropriate option. In many cases, the most potent strategies are those which seek to address and modify the conditions which activate the causal mechanisms involved. Regulation theory can inform such an agenda.

Regulation theory: exigency, expediency and expendability

The original rationale for the regulationist project stemmed directly from the recognition that capitalism is not an equilibrating process (Aghetta 1979). Thus,

Rethinking sustainable fishcries 155

regulation theory has attempted to explain how capitalism could survive despite crises congenital to the logic of capital accumulation. The suggestion is that conflict is avoided or at least postponed through a mode of social regulation - an ensemble of norms, institutions, organizational forms, social networks, and patterns of conduct - which constitute the conditions necessary for continued capital accumulation. Regulation theory replaces the notion of ‘reproduction’ with one of ‘regulation’ (Boyer 1990; Jessop 1990).

Modes of social regulation define rights, constraints, opportunities and pow- ers which influence the ways in which potentially significant causal mechanisms are expressed in practice. In realist terms, it is the mode of social regulation which activates or nullifies particular causal mechanisms. Because they legitimate and empower mechanisms in a selective and biased manner, modes of social regulation serve to condition the nature of development (Drummond and Marsden 1995). Current modes of social regulation tend to make unsustainable practices and events the norm. In capitalist societies, ‘regulation’ has been and remains primarily concerned to maintain and control the value of capital and fixed assets and to preserve existing power structures within society. The \tatus quo’ interpretation of policy formulation and implementation within the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) would seem to support such conclusions (Gulland 1987). The problem is that, in practice, preserving the validity of established accumulation systems and class structures usually involves the legiti- mation of increasingly exploitive practices and the implicit redefinition of resources in ways which deny their true social value and perpetuity.

Regulation theory is based on the premise that the emergence of contradiction, dysfunction and unsustainability is an inherent feature of the capitalist dynamic. This may or may not be the case. What is clear is that particular accumulation systems and concomitant social structures tend to become increasingly dysfunc- tional and unsustainable through time. This is apparent both in fisheries and elsewhere. Moreover, while regulation theory has been primarily concerned with the ways in which capitalist economies as a whole have been sustained over relatively long time horizons, the logic which it employs remains pertinent to the analysis of individual sectors. As Moulaert and Swyngedouw put it:

Embedded within this approach is the possibility of different forms of crisis: (a) short ‘conjunctural’ crises requiring minor adjustments (for instance, incremental technological changes, expanding spatial divisions of labour, and institutional adjustments); (b) structural crises (or crises of a particular mode of development) leading to qualitative changes in the organisation of the accumulation process; (c) crises resulting from fundamental contradictions in the capitalist mode of production itself (h4oulaex-t and Swyngedouw 1989, p. 329).

Unsustainable events have generally been perceived in terms of ‘conjunctural crises,’ when they might be better understood as reflecting the second and third types of crisis outlined above. Certainly the EU’s approach to fisheries policy has assumed that sustainability goals might be achieved through ‘minor adjust-


ments’ without any qualitative restructuring of the accumulation process or the regulatory context in which this occurs. As much of the twentieth century testifies, the inherent unsustainability of

socio-economic formations can be postponed, but in practice only through measures which tend to involve other forms of unsustainabdity. A useful conceptual distinction arises here between what might be termed ‘formational sustainability’ and ‘material sustainability’ (Drummond and Marsden 1995b). The former is the overriding object of regulation in capitalist societies and the condition which ensures the viability of a particular mode of social regulation. The latter encompasses the material and moral objectives of sustainable development. What tends to occur in practice is that the inherent unsustainability of socio-economic formations - group interests - is deferred, but only through processes which involve increasingly severe forms of exploitation. The inconse- quential unsustainability of social formations is translated into a h e r more materially and morally signdicant forms. A classic example of this was the attempt to prolong the life of Britain’s distant water fleet in the aftermathdtheintroduc- tion of Exclusive Economic Zones. At considerable expense, several freezer trawlers were redeployed from distant waters to fsh stocks of mackerel within UK waters. This had disastrous consequences both for the inshore sector and for the sustainability of mackerel stocks. It proved to be a short lived expedient.

As the viability of a particular socio-economic formation becomes threat- ened, strategies designed to preserve the value of capital and the viability of extant patterns of social relations are devised and promoted. Contradictions which emerge in a particular place at a particular time are either deferred through the provision of credit or subsidies or exported through protectionism and the exploitation of new resources and markets. The ‘successful’ strategies are determined by the mode of social regulation which selectively legitimates and empowers some whilst invalidating others. This process of selection is currently biased in ways which make unsustainable events the norm.

The effectiveness of even ‘successful’ strategies can only be temporary as new and more profound contradictions will tend to emerge. Thus it follows that subsequent strategies will necessarily involve ever more extreme forms of exploitation. However sustainability is defined, ‘successful’ strategies will inevita- bly tend to involve materially unsustainable forms of exploitation. Wherever the line is drawn, the nature of a competitive economy is such that there will always be pressures for this threshold to be transgressed. While the mode of social regulation as a whole remains intact, new and more profound contradictions will tend to emerge. This is a dynamic process and measures which sustain particular capitalist formations in this way will produce outcomes that are unsustainable because they necessarily involve the progressively severe exploitation of both natural capital and certain segments of society. In effect, sooner or later, the line between sustainability and unsustainability will be crossed. Moreover, it will continue to be crossed so long as the mode of social regulation as a whole remains viable.

Rethinking sustainuble fsheries

- I a l l b l m , I l l z

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High

Vlability of a particular capital and social formation

LOW

Figure 1: Regukation and unsustuinabk outcomes

Notwithstanding expedients such as the provision of credit, subsidies, the application of new technologies, or the acquisition of new markets, regulation is always likely to involve an incidental devaluation of both natural resources and human capital. It is usually a matter of where and when this occurs. Partic- ular instances of regulation may, temporarily, postpone the expression of economic dysfunction and crisis, but in doing so they undermine the social and ecological fabric of sustainability. Without regulation the accumulation process cannot function, but there comes a point where the dynamic can only be maintained through systems of exploitation which are unsustainable. Increasing- ly therefore, the capitalist accumulation process requires modes of social regulation which justify and legitimate materially unsustainable forms of exploitation.

This analysis can be related directly to Europe's fisheries where there has been a tendency for the harvesting sector to become less viable. The potential economic, social and political consequences have been addressed in various ways. But in almost every case, the strategies adopted have been partial and temporary and new forms of contradiction and new forms of crisis have continued to emerge. Figure 1 shows how the inherent unsustainability of particular socio-economic formations within the fisheries sector have been translated into more material, and more significant, forms of unsustainability.

For example, moment #1 in the diagram may represent the adoption of new fishing technologies. This makes the users more efficient and allows the particular enterprise to be sustained in the short term. However, in a competitive environment and especially under conditions of common property resources


where access to the resource itself implies no direct cost to the user, the use of such technologies is likely to become widespread and any relative advantage is soon negated. In so far as technological development makes fishing more ‘efficient’ it places more pressure on fish stocks. In this sense, it produces a materially unsustainable outcome - degradation of fish stocks - at moment #a.

This in turn, will further prejudice the viability of the industry. A further strategy thus becomes necessary at moment #2. This moment might represent protectionism through the imposition of national fishing rights (Exclusive Economic Zones). But again, this will engender materially unsustainable outcomes. Excluding some users will ease the situation of those who still have access, but it will further increase the pressures faced by those now excluded who will be obliged to resort to new and probably more exploitive practices, through targeting new fishing grounds or new species beyond the 200 mile limit. The same pressures which placed increasing stress on traditional locations and practices will now re-emerge within the new locations and recourse to overly exploitive practices will ensue. Overfishing, reactive regulation and the displacement of fishing effort to other regions has been a feature of fisheries development throughout the present century. Accordingly a materially unsustainable outcome, moment #b, again becomes inevitable.

Moment #3 may represent a situation in which pressures are put on govern- ments to preserve the status quo through guaranteed price supports or various forms of production subsidy. Such measures may preserve the status qwo in that they help sustain the value of fixed assets and the viability of established inter- est groups within the industry, but they do nothing to address the underlying problems. Indeed, as they serve to sustain levels of fishing effort which would otherwise be sub-economic, they are likely to accentuate problems of overfishing. Thus these measures will again promote a materially unsustainable outcome, #c. The trend to use progressively exploitive practices will thus continue until the whole formation break down at moment #n. Given the nature of the process, this final crisis is likely reflect ecological barriers rather than any purely economically or socially derived forms of dysfunction.

Crisis and response in the North Sea

To date, European fisheries policy has been formulated within a basically positivist paradigm. It has seldom progressed beyond attempts to prevent unsustainable events through instrumentalist measures related directly to specific problems. In practice, policy has never moved beyond the ‘minor adjustments’ described by Moulaert and Swyngedouw. Such measures may be necessary, but they are insufficient. The instruments employed amount to little more than short term expedients which fail to provide a complete solution - and certainly not sustainable development - unless complemented by measures which address the underlying conditions. Effective policies need to consider not simply where

Rethinking stlstuinuble fisheries 159

the line should be drawn and how this can be policed, but also the underlying tendencies to unsustainability and the institutions and values which legitimate and enable the practices involved.

In the North Sea the degradation of fish stocks has been ‘tackled’ by fine tuning TACs and quotas which attempt to limit output and licensing systems which restrict entry into the fishery. Essentially, policy has attempted to regu- late fisheries at a contingent level. In practice, the degradation of the stocks reflects a range of contingent factors which include: - the current state of stocks which reflects, amongst other things, past fishing

- the size and structure of the fishing fleets which until recently have been

- the structure of local, regional and global markets for fish. Whilst these are significant causal factors underpinning particular events, it is clear that measures which target intervention at this level are, in themselves, inadequate to produce sustainable development. Indeed, as Figure 1 implies, they may even be counter-productive. The need is to relocate interventioa away from attempts to address unsustainable events, such as overfishing, and target policy on the ‘moments’ where such events are shaped by causally significant structures and mechanisms.

What is needed therefore is a methodology which can inform policy formation by linking unsustainable outcomes to significant causal mechanisms and the particular conditions in which these occur. Understanding the situation in realist terms, and analysing actual events accordingly, can provide the basis of a more objective and substantial policy. Capturing this understanding requires that concrete events and abstract conceptualizations are brought together within a unified explanatory model. We may then have not only a better understanding of why present modes of development tend towards unsustainable outcomes, but we may also begin to understand how a condition of sustainable development can be purposively promoted.

To understand unsustainability in realist terms involves identifying which mechanisms are significant in causing unsustainable events and how these are influenced by particular contexts. In the case of North Sea fisheries, several mechanisms may be significant, including: - Modernization - linked to the integration of the industry within a region-

al/global food system in which processors and retailers exert an increasing, and often detrimental, influence on the practices of the harvesting sector. Moreover, the imposition of socially constructed ‘quality’ criteria in terms of preferred species has accentuated the level of fishing effort targeted on such species which may therefore be fished to unsustainable levels.

- The treadmill effects of technological innovation - exacerbated by the conditions of open access in which overcapitalization is a product of the race to fish. The application of new and more efficient technology has clearly al- lowed some fishing enterprises to be sustained in progressively stressful

effort;

subject to uncontrolled expansion in size and technical efficiency;


conditions engendered by the nature of a competitive economy. The effects of technological development are ‘activated’ by elements of the mode of social regulation: fishermen tend to view technology positively and uncriti- cally as desirable and legitimate - a view reinforced by the conditions of structural grant aid.

- Alienation amongst resource users - resulting from a sense of exclusion from policy-making processes and which allows certain practices outlawed by concrete regulatory measures to be socially legitimated.

- Falling unit values for the harvested resource - possibly as a general structural property of a capitalist economy, but certainly as an outcome of factors such as globalization of the market, product substitution and low elasticity of demand.

A more substantive analysis than that attempted here would identify and verify the significance of these mechanisms by ‘unpacking’ specific events and explor- ing the relationships between these and the objects and stnuxures to which they are related. Equally, a more complete analysis would have extended the investigation to consider structures other than those defined by the nature of the capitalist accumulation so as to include, for example, the structural proper- ties of fisheries ecosystems. But a salient feature of Europe’s fishing industries is that they are conditioned by the nature of a capitalist economy and this is significant in promoting unsustainable patterns of development. An important advance in the development of the sustainable development mncept is recogniz- ing the need to change modes of social regulation so that they no longer make unsustainable outcomes the norm. While society cannot simply construct new modes of social regulation as valid wholes, appropriate institutional reform is possible. It may not be possible to construct new modes of regulationperse but the sources of bias can be identified and the nature of development reconditioned.

As an example of the ‘unpacking’ of specific events in the search for causal structures and mechanisms, reference might be made to the current debate concerning the role of common property rights in frustrating attempts to introduce more effective measures to combat the tendencies of overfshing. One current line of thought favoured by economists focuses on institutional and structural change through the introduction of ITQs and the priw&zarion of property rights which could reduce the uncontrolled expansion of technology; restructure (and reduce) fishing capacity; and realign harvesting to the markets - but with potentially unsustainable social outcomes (Symes and Crean 1995). An alternative position involves communalization ofpropay rights as developed in the inshore fisheries of Japan (Kalland 1996). Community based territorial use rights, reinforced by local modes of social regulation based on principles of equity, have largely succeeded in preventing the tendency to overexploitation. While it would certainly prove difficult to replicate such systems in a context of developed and declining fisheries, an approximation to the concept of communalization might be achieved through measures involving regionalization of fisheries policy; integration of fishermen’s organizations within the policy

Rethinking sustainable frrheries 161

process; and the development of comanagement systems. Such radically different agendas draw attention to two weaknesses in current policy: the lack of defined policy objectives in economic, social and cultural terms, and the a b sence of any objective methodology for establishing the significance and effects of the proposed measures.

Conditions of sustainability

There is a growing recognition that in the fisheries sector, and elsewhere, effective policy requires unsustainable events and practices to be understood and addressed as the outcomes of social processes and the conditions in which they occur. At present, prescriptions about value shifts and institutional change remain highly generalized and of little utility to policy makers. Even where policy formulation is theoretically informed, different and often discordant prescriptions emerge. This paper has attempted to outline a different approach to sustainability. If we accept that current modes of development are conditioned to the unsustainable, then there should be considerable merit in promoting sustainability through policies which seek to modif)r the conditioning process rather than to police the unsustainable outcomes. This requires that policy goals currently defined in terms of ‘sustainability metrics’ are redefined. In practice, it means replacing ‘sustainability limits’ with notions of equilibrium. Viewed in these terms, the current situation can be seen as a system which tends to disequilibrium, but where equilibrium is maintained in the short term through mechanisms which must cumulatively degrade the system. As currently constituted, modes of social regulation are biased in ways which prioritize and ascribe flexibility to strategies designed to sustain capital and group interests. Certainly there are attempts to restrict fishing effort, but there are also a whole range of specific and, more importantly, general components of the mode of social regulation which legitimate and empower strategies which preserve the status quo. The equilibrium could be maintained through measures which reversed this bias: there may well be more merit in policies which tax technology or impose resource rents than in subsidies and empowerments which currently typify policy. Such measures might be radical and politically inexpedient; but we need to know whether or not they are appropriate.

If the theory and practice of sustainable development are to move beyond the inadequacies of the status quo, new approaches are necessary. Engagement with mainstream social theory, and in particular with critical realism, can make a valuable contribution to the debate. Hitherto, policy makers have relied upon simplistic notions of causality, focused upon the event and its contingent conditions rather than upon the underlying structures and mechanisms. It is the task of the social scientist to investigate and explain these underlying conditions more fully and, where possible, to identify more relevant points of entry for policy intervention. Equally, it is incumbent upon those responsible for policy


formulation to heed the lessons of such investigations. Otherwise, they will simply continue to promote the conditions af unswtainability.

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rethinking sustainable fisheries: the realist paradigm

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