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).