Sustainable Food Governance by Governments and Markets: The Case of Sustainable Seafood Provision

The environmental consequences of the increasing global seafood production and consumption are substantial and drive a search for providing more adequate governance responses. In recent years, market-based approaches to sustainable seafood governance have gained considerable traction. Born in part out of perceived failures of state-based regulations, a range of civil society-led governance approaches have emerged. Private seafood governance
arrangements interact with public seafood regulations and this may lead to competition, collaboration or hybridity. This interaction should however not be assessed in general but more closely related to the different stages in the regulatory cycle: agenda setting/negotiation, implementation and monitoring/enforcement. Collaboration between public and private global seafood governance arrangements occurs primarily in the first phase of the regulatory cycle but gets much less prominent in later phases where competition or even separation prevails. Harmonization between public and private sustainable seafood governance arrangements in the near future is therefore unlikely.