Governance innovation networks for sustainable tuna

Governance Innovation Networks for Sustainable Tuna

Alice M.M. Miller

Tuna fisheries are among the most highly capitalised and valuable fisheries in the world and their exploitation will continue for the foreseeable future. This means the sustainability of tuna stocks is a pressing global issue that has received attention from a wide range of societal actors. The analysis presented in this thesis investigates governance innovation networks to understand how interdependent governance arrangements for production and consumption in the tuna global production networks, steer and shape processes of sustainability innovation.

The question this research seeks to answer is how do different market- and state-led governance innovations advance the governance of sustainable tuna? Using the analytical lens of global production networks, four different governance innovations for sustainability in tuna fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, targeting European and North American markets are examined. More specifically: state-led governance innovations in the West and Central Pacific Ocean both through regional bodies and through the interaction between the EU and the Pacific Islands countries; and market-led innovations through the implementation of private standards for certifying tuna fisheries and the firm-NGO development and implementation of consumer-facing traceability systems.

The cases in this thesis indicate that the state- and market-led distinction is inadequate for understanding sustainability governance in the tuna global production network. Instead, different efforts to both frame and deal with issues surrounding sustainability in the tuna global production network sees actors produce innovative instruments to influence production and consumption practices and that these instruments interact with each other and with different actors to form actor-instrument arrangements. This interaction leads to a reclassification of actor roles away from their assignation as standard state, market and NGO and in turn, this reclassification presents us with the need to form different concepts of power. Therefore, through governance innovation networks we can understand how the interaction between actors and instruments is reconfiguring global production networks when sustainability moves to the fore.