Confronting the limits of Western equity theory
In considering how equity is pursued and the extent which it is manifest, tensions in its conceptualisation and application need to be attended to. These tensions include the call for pluralism in the legal and moral basis for deciding what is equitable, as described earlier. Equity as applied and monitored in global goal-setting programs, such as the SDGs, assumes the universality of the Western legal conceptualisation of what constitutes fairness and justice and how these should be measured. While in contrast, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) acknowledges the legal and moral systems of governance of Traditional and Indigenous peoples in which conceptualisations of equity differ (Donnelly 1984).
Dominant views of equity have a political-legal history where through the colonial process lands were re-named, re-defined and subjected to a set of values and norms that had been designed as a vehicle of legitimating the incoming colonial rule. In many parts of the world this justification was based on the Euro-centric concept of “Terra Nullius” of empty lands in need of and subject to conquest. In terms of the ocean, the first treatise on international law, Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) outlined a pervasive global sentiment that “the sea, since it is as incapable of being seized as air, cannot be attached to the possession of any particular nation” (Grotius, 1609). In the 21st century whilst critical academic, historical and socio-political processes have exposed the root causes and structural violence embedded in these legacies of conquest, the global structure of how power, equity and politics flows still contains elements of the “old power”. Therefore, progress on “equity” in our oceans has to be viewed also in the context of structure-agency, whose equity and fairness, when and in what context? For example, will large-scale financial transfers and limited recognition of Indigenous rightswithin these structures equate and satisfy those endemic (Mustonen, 2014) ways of being that co-developed for millennia with the seas? What is the price of the ultimate loss, genocide and subsequent attempts to redress “past wrongs” in an equitable manner at sea? These are some of the profound questions that must be reflected on by future scholars exploring equity.
Therefore, there is increasing awareness of the complexity of equity, and the different considerations involved, as well as a growing realisation of how existing structures and arrangements particularly in Western cultures, are not well equipped to respond. Equity presents a challenge for society on many different fronts, not least in terms of challenging underlying values about who and what has power and how rules are made as well as how social structures and institutions are organised and run. In short, equity is a social challenge in terms ofconcept , outcome, and process .
These tensions include the call for greater attention to the role of power in deciding what is fair and just, informed by the works of theorists such as Marx, Foucault, Habermas, and in recognising power, as well as capital, as resources or benefits in themselves which are inequitably distributed (Cook and Emerson, 1978). Access to these can have a determining influence on the ability of marginalised groups (for example, ethnic minority groups) to participate equitability in processes seeking procedural justice administered by institutions designed to give them ‘equality of opportunity’ (Mentovich, 2012, Gustavsson et al., 2014).
Further, they include the call to expand the scope of for whom or what equity is sought to be inclusive of non-human entities and concerns (Fitzmaurice, 2008, Preston, 2018, Spijkers, 2018). This contrasts with the treatment of the earth as a resource to which humans and future generations of humans have rights, as expressed in various global governance instruments. The expansion of the community of justice or moral community to encompass notions such as interspecies equity (Bosselmann, 2016) has arisen in acknowledgment of their inherent value, as well as of the role of natural systems in human wellbeing and flourishing.
In a personal story told to the authorship team, Taiwanese Indigenous leader Sutej Hugu defined the teaching of mavaheng so panid  (the noble black-wing flying fish, Hirundichthys rondeletii ) to the ancestors of his Tao people:
“The teaching includes two major parts: firstly, the inter-species compact for the survival and sustenance of peoples and fish and the eco-calendar, ahehep no tao, that defines the arrangement of works and ceremonies all around the year (see Mustonen et al., Submitted). This points to the ways that Indigenous peoples saw the ocean and her species as relatives and developed temporal and spatial means of co-existence over time – many of which were seen as evil, bad or hindering modernity and progress by outsiders during the hey-day of the colonial process (and therefore a subject of termination often).”
The same power discourse is present today on the role and “inefficiency” of the small-scale fisheries fleet globally (Isaacs et al., n.d) when in fact the small-scale harvesters continue to demonstrate the answers to the emptying of the oceans (see Salatou, in Mustonen et al., Submitted).