Ocean governance and maritime security in a placeful environment: The case of the European Union

Adopting a critical geopolitics approach that accounts for the mutually reinforcing link between geo-informed narratives and projection practices, this article proposes that ocean governance and maritime security have translated into states' and regional organisations' increasing control over maritime spaces. This leads to a certain territorialisation of the sea, not so much from a sovereignty and jurisdictional perspective but from a functional and normative perspective. The article starts by discussing the ways oceans have been represented and shows that they are far from a placeless void, both in practice and in discourse. The article then frames the analysis of ocean governance and maritime security within critical geopolitics, and elaborates on the case of the European Union's narrative and practice. It concludes on the mutually reinforcing link between discourse and practice in the field of ocean governance and maritime security in general, and on the consequences for the EU in particular. Scholars working on ocean governance and maritime security are encouraged to challenge the traditional view that oceans are placeless.     

SoFISHticated policy – social perspectives on the fish conflict in the Northeast Atlantic

Ecosystem changes currently question the traditional allocation of fishing rights and quotas in the fishery of Northeast Atlantic mackerel and Norwegian spring-spawning herring in the Northeast Atlantic. Variability in the distribution of these highly migratory species escalated in a political conflict between member states of the European Union, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway, which is a driving force for unsustainable fishery. The aim of this paper is to investigate this conflict by outlining the social understandings of diverse stakeholders by using the Q methodology. The method reduced the complexity of numerous opinions, detected four distinct perspectives and simultaneously categorised the participating stakeholders. Although the perspectives differ in various elements, the protection of economic interests seems to dominate over the quest for sustainability. The call of all stakeholders in this study to clarify the fishing rights in the Northeast Atlantic reveals a clear deficiency of the current international fishery management in handling abrupt ecological changes and the necessity to acknowledge this as a complex adaptive system.     

Relations between professional groups in the Atlantic and Mediterranean fishing enclaves of Andalusia (Spain): A personal networks approach with clustered graphs

This paper proposes a new network-based approach to analyse intergroup relations in fishing ports. The technique of clustered graphs is applied to the case of the Andalusian fishing ports to assess the balance between intra and inter-professional relationships. The patterns of sociability in Mediterranean and Atlantic fishing enclaves in the southern region of Spain were compared, examining their implications for participatory governance of marine resources. The personal networks of 53 fishermen, ship owners or skippers and key individuals of 18 Andalusian fisheries were analysed. The personal networks were compared in terms of fishing ground (Atlantic versus Mediterranean) and port type (by size and form of participation). The data of 45 individuals with whom each respondent usually interacts in the harbour was summarised in clustered graphs of intra-group and inter-group relationships between 8 professional roles in the harbour. Results show primarily that personal networks of Mediterranean ports are overall denser, in comparison with those of the Atlantic, which are more centralised and have a higher average betweenness. Secondly, in the Atlantic a clear difference of roles between ship owners and skippers is observed. A strong link between ship owners and the crew was found, and also between the ship owner and commercial roles in the Mediterranean. Small ports seem to be more apt for the artisanalisation of fisheries, as well as for the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy.     

Engaging in the boycott,divestment, and sanctions (bds) debate

The goal of this forum is to garner attention to the issues surrounding the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, to help a broad audience better understand the complexity of BDS, and to engage geographers in the BDS debate. Including the editorial introduction, seven different experts on the issues of Palestine/ Israel have written six essays on BDS for this forum. The six essays represent a wide range of opinions while also echoing some similar themes.     

Revisiting the death of geography in the era of Big Data: the friction of distance in cyberspace and real space

Many scholars have argued that the importance of geographic proximity in human interactions has been diminished by the use of the Internet, while others disagree with this argument. Studies have noted the distance decay effect in both cyberspace and real space, showing that interactions occur with an inverse relationship between the number of interactions and the distance between the locations of the interactors. However, these studies rarely provide strong evidence to show the influence of distance on interactions in cyberspace, nor do they quantify the differences in the amount of friction of distance between cyberspace and real space. To fill this gap, this study used massive amounts of social media data (Twitter) to compare the influence of distance decay on human interactions between cyberspace and real space in a quantitative manner. To estimate the distance decay effect in both cyberspace and real space, the distance decay function of interactions in each space was modeled. Estimating the distance decay in cyberspace in this study can help predict the degree of information flow across space through social media. Measuring how far ideas can be diffused through social media is useful for users of location-based services, policy advocates, public health officials, and political campaigners.     

《巴黎协定》实施细则适应议题焦点解析及后续中国应对措施

适应是《联合国气候变化框架公约》及其《巴黎协定》下的重要谈判内容。2018年12月举行的第24次缔约方大会（COP24）就适应议题后续实施方案达成了共识,为全球气候治理带来新的机遇和挑战。中国在未来全球气候治理中,如何借助新成果推动国内适应工作稳步发展,积极发挥中国作用,是新形势下亟需考虑的重要问题。基于此,本文梳理了适应议题的焦点问题、各集团和缔约方的立场观点,展望了2019—2025年适应相关议题主要工作安排,并对此提出了中国未来适应领域完成相关工作需要考虑的应对措施建议,包括：(1)深入分析国际信息报告体系与国内信息的联系,梳理国内适应工作亮点,为构建高质量报告奠定基础;(2)构建跨部门跨地区协作机制,加强信息搜集与完善,有效提高数据和信息统计功能;(3)强化气候变化适应技术、规范、标准等科学研究的作用,为制定政策规定时纳入相应技术要求、提高政策规定等需求提供科学性和可操作性的服务。     

Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis

There is now an extensive literature on the question of how individual-level factors affect climate change perceptions, showing that socio-political variables, notably values, worldviews and political orientation, are key factors alongside demographic variables. Yet little is known about cross-national differences in these effects, as most studies have been conducted in a single or small number of countries and cross-study comparisons are difficult due to different conceptualisations of key climate change dimensions. Using data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (n = 44,387), we examine how key socio-political and demographic factors are associated with climate change perception across 22 European countries and Israel. We show that human values and political orientation are important predictors of climate change beliefs and concern, as are the demographics of gender, age, and education. Certain associations with climate change perceptions, such as the ones for the self-transcendence versus self-enhancement value dimension, political orientation, and education, are more consistent across countries than for gender and age. However, even if the direction of the associations are to a large extent consistent, the sizes of the effects are not. We demonstrate that the sizes of the effects are generally smaller in Central and Eastern European countries, and that some demographic effects are larger in Northern European as compared to Western European countries. This suggests that findings from one country do not always generalize to other national contexts.     

Measuring,mapping and quantifying the effects of trust and informal communication on transboundary collaboration in the Great Lakes fisheries policy network

Ecosystem-based management of fisheries and other transboundary natural resources require a number of organizations across jurisdictions to exchange knowledge, coordinate policy goals and engage in collaborative activities. Trust, as part of social capital, is considered a key mechanism facilitating the coordination of such inter-organizational policy networks. However, our understanding of multi-dimensional trust as a theoretical construct and an operational variable in environmental and natural resource management has remained largely untested. This paper presents an empirical assessment of trust and communication measures applied to the North American Great Lakes fisheries policy network. Using a scale-based method developed for this purpose, we quantify the prevalence of different dimensions of trust and in/formal communication in the network and their differentiated impacts on decision-making and goal consensus. Our analysis reveals that calculation-based ‘rational trust’ is important for aligning mutual goals, but relationship-based ‘affinitive trust’ is most significant for influencing decision-making. Informal communication was also found to be a strong predictor of how effectively formal communication will influence decision-making, confirming the “priming” role of informal interactions in formal inter-agency dealings. The results also show the buffering and interactive functions of these components in strengthening institutional resilience, with procedural trust undergirding the system to compensate for a lack of well-developed relationships. Overall, this study provides evidence to suggest that informal communication and multi-dimensional trust constitute a crucial element for improving collaboration and reducing conflict in the networked governance of transboundary natural resource systems.     

Confronting the nitrogen challenge: Options for governance and target setting

The release of excessive anthropogenic nitrogen contributes to global climate change, biodiversity loss, and the degradation of ecosystem services. Despite being an urgent global problem, the excess nitrogen is not governed globally. This paper considers possible governance options for dealing with excessive nitrogen through target setting, which is an approach commonly adopted to address global environmental problems. The articulation of the nitrogen problem and the numerous international institutions dealing with it, provide evidence of a nitrogen regime characterised by limited coordination and targets covering sources and impacts only partially. This calls for improving the nitrogen governance in the direction of more integrated approaches at the global scale. In this vein, the paper investigates two opposite governance options – here labelled as ‘holistic’ and ‘origin-based’ – and evaluates them for their capability to define solutions and targets for human-induced nitrogen. From the analysis, it emerges that origin-based solutions can be preferable to holistic solutions as they can be more specific and potentially have greater immediate results. Independent from which governance arrangement is chosen, what matters most is the speed at which an arrangement can deploy solutions to combat (fast-growing) nitrogen pollution.     

Who governs here? Informal resource extraction,state enforcement,and conflict in Ghana

Over the past two decades, “illegal” natural resource extraction has become a significant driver of environmental change and social conflict across the Global South. In response, numerous Sub-Saharan African states have engaged in governance reforms that heed calls to securitize – or, establish and consolidate state control over – natural resources. In Ghana, securitization has served to entrench the informal economy as domestic producers, marginalized in the process of reform, continue to utilize non-state institutions to maintain access. While the Ghanaian state has branded “illegal” resource extraction a major environmental, social, and national security concern, it has responded to this threat unevenly; it has violently enforced its authority in some contexts but remained relatively indifferent in others. This article explores the phenomenon of selective enforcement to explain patterns of violence that have emerged between state and society in response to both securitization and informality. Drawing on a multimethod approach, I find that natural resource governance authority remains fragmented across resource contexts, and that the configuration of authority and interests on the ground shapes the extent of state intervention. I propose a natural resource typology that identifies when the state is most likely to enforce its authority, and the degree of violent conflict likely to result. Ultimately, I contend that domestic patterns of enforcement are shaped primarily by: 1) competition with local power holders over resource entitlements and 2) global conservation and extraction priorities. While specific to Ghana, this argument can provide important insights into the relationship between informal extraction, state enforcement, and social conflict in other Global South contexts.