CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Gabler, Carolina |
|---|---|
| Title | The Scales of Justice in High Seas fisheries: How economic, cultural and political systems behind Ocean governance create injustices |
| Summary | Apart from threatening marine biodiversity and therefore harming Ocean health of global significance, fishing in the High Seas is connected to many other global injustices. This thesis aims to understand the emergence of those injustices, by applying Nancy Fraser’s Scales of Justice theory, which focuses on the underlying economic, cultural and political systems. While Ocean governance has been analyzed by scholars using justice oriented analytical lenses, the fishing regime specifically needs to be examined through them. I found the economic class structure to be shaped by the High Seas’ and fish stocks’ natural features: Fishing there is very resource intensive due to the water’s vastness and the decreasing fish stocks’ spacious distribution. Subsidies need to fuel this industry, low-income countries are therefore excluded from this technically global market. On the cultural scale I found the status order of cultural values to reflect Western hegemony. Examples of institutions holding up this order are epistemology and green growth capitalism. Lastly, I found the political constitution(s) of Ocean governance to misrepresent the rights, needs and interests of many. Examples of such misrepresentations are the omission of direct fishery laws in the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), Regional Fisheries Management Organization’s (RFMO) enforcement mechanism, or on a broader scale the anthropocentric frame setting. |
| Supervisor | Granger, Marie-Pierre Françoise |
| Department | Undergraduate Studies BA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/gabler_carolina.pdf |
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