Sustainable seafood is central to most of our work, but finishing this book has proven more challenging than we could have ever imagined at the start of this project four years ago.
Our interest in the sustainable seafood movement directly reflects the number of standards, codes and initiatives it entails. Each new method or approach taken up involves fishers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), governments and retailers in novel combinations and with differing goals and aspirations. The challenge for two academics following these developments is the pace at which the sustainable movement continues to develop. It takes serious effort to keep abreast of all the changes and innovation, let alone document and make sense of what these changes mean for the ultimate goal of delivering sustainable seafood outcomes.
The challenge of covering the full range of sustainability initiatives is therefore incomplete. Our goal in this book has instead been to provide enough detail for both academics and practitioners to reflect on the social complexity of governing global food systems. This, we hope, is the enduring value of the theoretical project this book entails. We hope, however, that this ‘theory’ will not scare away those with a more central interest in seafood, fisheries and aquaculture. Instead, our goal is to inspire readers from all disciplines (and even practitioners) to reimagine and more effectively design their goals for sustainable seafood provision to achieve greater impact.
As the chapters unfold it will become apparent how much we have drawn on our earlier work and the work of our close co-authors and students over the last decade. We are indebted to all of these colleagues, both within and across the social and natural sciences, for helping us make sense of what shapes global fisheries and aquaculture production, trade and consumption. We hope we have represented your ideas accurately, and challenge you to think further with us on the future of food system governance — whether it be for fish or any other global food commodity.

List of illustrations vi

Preface viii

List of abbreviations ix

1 Governing seafood: an introduction 1

PART I Understanding sustainable seafood 23

2 Understanding sustainable seafood governance 25

3 The global dynamics of sustainable seafood 47

PART II Governing sustainable seafood 75

4 Public regulation of fisheries and aquaculture 77

5 Governing seafood through markets 104

6 Beyond labelling: alternative approaches to seafood sustainability 132

PART III The future of sustainable seafood 161

7 Towards a social understanding of the sustainable seafood movement 163

8 The future of sustainable seafood 192

Index 199

中国农科院农业信息研究所