Certifying Sustainable Territories
Posted on September 10, 2015 by Simon Bush
Eco-certification in food sectors such as seafood is often thought as a very ‘market-based’ affair. By buying a eco-labelled fish consumers are thought to increase demand for that product and influence a producer to improve their production practices. In a recent paper published in Environment and Planning A, we provide a theoretical way of analyzing and challenging this very idea.
Eco-certification works by certifying production practices in a given area or ‘territory’. Whether this is a positive thing or not is a the matter of considerable debate. While some think these certified territories are akin to a sustainability enclave – within which the things we care about (be they environmental or social) are protected. Others think that these private territories impinge on the sovereignty of states by overriding legislatively agreed upon rules. In doing so public resources are ‘grabbed’ under the pretense of sustainability.
Debates like this are polarizing and don’t help us understand how these territories are defined and used, for better or worse, to address sustainability. We used the seafood industry to explore this; both fisheries and aquaculture open two very different spatially configured production systems. But in the end, they both deliver fish to the same retail counter.
Our approach is based on the sociological concept of ‘assemblage’ – which in simple terms recognizes that environmental regulation is not a fixed process. Instead it shows that it is a choice to regulate or protect, and the rules that are use to do so are continually negotiated by those we think are expert enough to represent societies interests. But in the end this also means choices are made, some of which favour certain environments or groups of people, while others don’t.
What certification then does is define spatial boundaries around territories that either include or exclude the things we are concerned about. These boundaries are also defined by who is applying for the certification (the subjects of concern); farmers, companies and governments. Finally, boundaries are defined by the expertise available to monitor and assess these objects and subjects.
So what does this show us? For one, it demonstrates that the territories that seafood certification creates are both inclusive and exclusive. In some cases enclaves are created that save some environments and people and not others. In other cases certification undermines states sovereignty. And in other cases still it is used to strengthen the government control over resources. But in all cases we see that certification is far from market-based alone. It is instead assembled, actively or not, by the social and political interests of those that are seek control over resources and the sustainability of these resources alike.
Interested in reading more around this topic?
Bear C, (2013). Assembling the sea: materiality, movement and regulatory practices in the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery. Cultural Geographies 20 21–41. DOI: 10.1177/1474474012463665
Fairhead, J., Leach, M., & Scoones, I. (2012). Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature? Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), 237-261. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2012.671770
Vandergeest P, Unno A, (2012) A new extraterritoriality? Aquaculture certification, sovereignty, and
empire. Political Geography 31 358–367. DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.05.005
Vandergeest, P., Ponte, S., & Bush, S. (2015). Assembling sustainable territories: space, subjects, objects, and expertise in seafood certification. Environment and Planning A, 47: 1-19. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X15599297