Discussion
Oceans are acknowledged as a domain where considerable inequity exists in terms of benefits that are generally accumulated by a few and yet costs often borne by the most vulnerable (Österblom et al., 2020). Over the coming decades as trends associated with climate change (Pörtner et al., 2019), and the great ‘blue acceleration’ both continue to grow, we run the risk of existing equity issues being magnified and growing more urgent, rather than moving towards resolution. Globally, regionally, and locally, our future plans for the oceans need to consider equity in a much broader way than has been done to date. As highlighted in the recent Blue Paper by the High Level Panel for A Sustainable Ocean Economy “Shifting a historical trajectory of persistent and increasing inequities will require strong leadership, inclusive governance and long-term planning that starts with a commitment to equity as integral to a sustainable ocean economy and relationships within and across nations” (Österblom et al., 2020). Issues of ocean equity are, therefore, not challenges that the marine research sector can solve alone, however, as a research community we can start to make the changes needed to achieve more sustainable ocean futures with improved equity outcomes.
The process of engaging with these questions of equity provoked significant personal and collective reflection amongst the co-authorship team concerning both the way equity is conceptualised and considered within the sample of futures science for the oceans, and the way it was practiced within our own research co-production for this manuscript. We distil these below and highlight some of the key lessons we will aim to take forward in future work.
For the involved Indigenous and Traditional Peoples and their communities, the central understandings flow from Sutej Hugu’s understandings which he described to the authorship team as summarised below.
“When Indigenous governance of seas and oceans has (had) the time and space to operate within it is own scales and manner, it is often an inter-species compact building on strict laws of the sea as defined in the Indigenous governance of how humans belong with the sea. The sea and the ocean is a living, providing being which should not be under any circumstances angered or abused.Equity is building on an understanding of deep interconnections with species and humans as manifest for example in Taiwan between the Tao and noble black-wing flying fish, Hirundichthys rondeletiid, or any other deep relation across the world on these profound connections. They form the basis of traditional concepts of equity that have since, for a number of reasons, including colonial process, self-destruction of these values and systems and imposed power structures, been lost or survived to varying degrees. However, it is important to realize that such systems have been in place and delivered endemic notions of equity as a part of the Indigenous governance of the seas historically, and in part today.”
Small scale fleets and harvesters (Isaacs et al., n.d) are often the keepers of remaining equity management and co-existence mechanisms but are also mostly affected by the large fleets for example through exclusion of quota allocations, destruction of habitats and stocks by trawling fleets and other issues. Whilst care has to be taken to investigate each small-scale fishery case on their own, we can learn from each case and global solidarity and unity for diverse indigenous and smaller scale fisheries can be found across continents (Isaacs et al., n.d), traditional systems (Mustonen and Huusari, 2020) and globally (Mustonen et al., Submitted) in this issue.
Equity is more than achieving material outcomes or implementing processes: Addressing equity is coupled with achieving the SDGs but to be enduring, equity must focus on more than just outcomes or process. It is also about context, including the values, power, accountability and capacity of decisions and actions, and awareness of and reflection upon these things (McKeon, 2017). This was almost unanimously recognised by the papers included in this analysis, particularly about knowledge systems, the capacity required, and the degree of agency held. Equity may also be countervailing. This is illustrated in ‘Food for all’ in which greater equity is achieved materially by providing greater access to fish stocks for small-scale subsistence fishers but which may be at the cost of localised depletion of fish stocks. Acknowledging this complexity and supporting decision-making for situations when equity and sustainability cannot both be achieved is lacking in the SDGs (Sexsmith and McMichael, 2015). While universally-declared normative frameworks have come a long way in accepting the need for equity, the mechanisms required to achieve equity, including fundamental challenges to current systems, institutions, power arrangements and values with potentially uncomfortable trade-offs and conflicts are less tangible. Furthermore, equity can never be finally achieved, it is always in a dynamic state (Boyle, 1993); to be equitable is to shift and change to share the balance of power and consequences.
Equity is inherently relational and morally grounded: Equity has critical process dimensions and the pursuit of its needs to reflect the foundational, dynamic, and relational cultural and political context in which what is equitable is defined. The need for inclusion of multiple knowledge systems alongside Western science knowledge with which to understand changing oceans and the changing relationships communities have with oceans was recognised in several papers. If we discuss the ocean we want, and would like to see, we then need progress on all sectors and issues to arrive in a place of restitutive rights and justice, and equity. But, even then, which is of course reflected in the many Indigenous and traditional worldviews, equity will not only be about rights, or benefits, rather, also co-dependency and ”moral” responsibility to maintain good relations with other species, the ocean and the planet. For example, in New Zealand legal standing as personhood has been used a basis for establishing rights of parts of the natural world but – further to that - for formalising relationality between peoples and rivers, as well as guardianship under Māori culture and tradition (Hsiao, 2012, Argyrou and Hummels, 2019). This is resonating through the compact between species that is, for example, still maintained in Taiwan between Tao people and noble black-wing flying fish, Hirundichthys rondeletiid . Equity is therefore not only about rights and undoing of past wrongs, it is also about our responsibilities and renewal of responsible behaviour, from daily (Isaacs et al., n.d) to planetary scales (Mustonen et al., Submitted) in trying to undo the massive destruction of the past centuries.
Imbedded inequity cannot be overcome by more of the same: Equity as written in the SDGs is problematic because it does not address how we achieve the social and system change required. Rather, it presumes that the systems that created and embedded inequity will somehow be able to reverse it (Winkler and Williams 2017, Fukuda‐Parr 2019). This lack of reckoning with the imbedded nature of some inequities is illustrated in many of the papers examined in this analysis in which these are acknowledged as needing to be overcome without including pathways or actions to enable the restitution, rights, capacity building and capital some groups may require in order to be able to overcome historical and structural factors which may reinforce inequities. This is illustrated by the contributive role of, and indeed reinforcement of, existing social inequalities by the COVID19 pandemic and the effects of the responding state-based health measures and associated economic crisis (Ahmed et al., 2020). Further illustrating this, Grazia Feyerabend, long-time director of the Indigenous and Community Conserved Area Consortium (ICCA) has identified in equity discussions how modern solutions justify countries to continue to do little or nothing on issues such as pollution. Proper ’governance and management units’ which she sees as the crux of the matter should flow from principles such as subsidiarity, historical continuity, appropriate capacities, and fairness, but also ecological integrity and meaning (Mustonen et al., Submitted). Feyerabend (cited in Mustonen et al., Submitted) has often been doubtful that these puzzles can be solved with the “chainsaw of national legislation and rules applicable equally, top down, to very different conditions and realities”. Modern governance has implied often presumed authority, diffused and unclear responsibility and little to no accountability for a great part of the oceans. Small-scale fishers’ experiences are a direct evidence of this process (Isaacs et al., n.d).
Future oceans science must change to support pathways to more equitable futures: There is a strong commitment in the marine-science community to engage with the concept of equity, but there is still much work to be done and it will be ongoing. As is clear from the analysis, in a couple of instances equity is barely addressed, in some cases engagement with the concept is still superficial or limited to technocratic solutions, but in others there is a clear commitment to on-going learning and change. The Future Seas process revealed to us that the values deeply embedded in science and knowledge production are not necessarily equitable or enabling of equity inquiry, as acknowledged more broadly (Ford et al., 2016). We observed the challenges to inclusivity of multiple voices in co-design and production of these science papers arising from a range of institutional characteristics, namely: the ‘expert’ peer review process; the requirement for referencing published ideas from predominantly Western and scientific literature; the specific disciplinary framing of future challenges and drivers; the “echo chamber” effect of co-authors holding (mostly) like-minded views; and the academic focus on ideas with limited participation from those involved in implementation (e.g. policy, government, public). We recognise that these are fundamental and structural issues that could not have been avoided here but are challenges for the future production of science. Moreover, there is a significant gap in training and education and financial support in science to prepare scientists to welcome and value different approaches and develop capability for thinking about equity at all levels and stages of research. Co-design and co-production seem to present promising ways forward to explore issues in more depth and breadth but perhaps there is a fundamental change in how we move forward, not as experts seeking answers separate from ourselves but as reflective practitioners inviting and working with others to build deeply personal ways forward, together.
Our own practice of marine science and research is not fully inclusive: As an authorship team we collectively have only our own subjective experience and the work presented in published peer-reviewed papers to draw from. It was our explicit intention not to co-opt others voices in a way that reduced their power or changed their intent, which is difficult without deep understanding. We can only ever present a partial and limited view and aim to open a dialogue to include others in an on-going process of learning and reflecting (Winkler and Williams, 2017). Inclusion of different voices in different ways is not intended to make those voices ‘other’ or separate, but the publication process which leads to scientific research papers is restrictive and needs to become more inclusive, especially to those at earlier career stages and diverse backgrounds (Bennett, 2018). While the authorship group for this paper does encompass a more diverse group than often encountered, we recognise that more diversity is better, and we recognise the vast number of voices not included in the research undertaken.
More broadly, despite attempts to be diverse and to actively include other voices, marine science production is still the domain of a narrow set of hegemonic interests (white/Western/middle-aged/middle-class/male/positivist scientific) (Bennett, 2018). There remains significant work for science and knowledge production to be sufficiently co-produced, inclusive and diverse (Nielsen et al., 2018, Walter and Suina, 2019), and we support the multiple efforts across marine science to address these issues. These include: specific science organisation and Indigenous and Traditional Peoples partnerships, such as the Kimberley Indigenous Saltwater Science Project in Western Australia (Western Australian Marine Science Institution, 2014); structural corrections in science organisations to address barriers to women’s participation in marine science (Sardelis et al., 2017); and formal embedding of local ecological knowledge of small-scale fishers in marine assessments in developing contexts (Berkström et al., 2019). These efforts examine equity as it manifests in futures ocean science. They show that while who gets what (e.g. distributive equity as per the SDGs) is a traditional way of looking at justice, process and procedural equity are equally important. It is also clear that each justice question will be framed differently depending on environmental, economic, and social contexts. Therefore, the basis for decision making must be underpinned by a clearly expressed conceptual framework that is acceptable to all parties and there must be openness to consider transformational change.