Compromising situations: participation and politics in the sustainable development of Canada's oceans

Davis, Reade (2009) Compromising situations: participation and politics in the sustainable development of Canada's oceans. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The early 1990s brought sweeping changes to the ways in which uses of the ocean are governed in Canada. At that time, the federal government signalled its intention to move away from the highly centralized fisheries management regime that it had employed in the past. In its place, there emerged a comprehensive new ocean management regime that was intended to encourage the development of other ocean industries and bring Canada's domestic legislation into conformity with policy discourses that had become institutionalized through the Rio Earth Summit and subsequent UN conferences. Most prominent among these are: “sustainable development,” “the ecosystem approach” and an emphasis on the active participation of “civil society” in environmental management. This dissertation explores the ways in which this new policy approach has been engaged with and, in some cases, contested by variously positioned actors in eastern Newfoundland. I argue that what are ostensibly global managerial discourses are being reshaped within particular localities in support of very different, and often incommensurable, agendas. This suggests that ocean planning is not a value-neutral enterprise, but a politically charged conversation, the outcome of which will have significant and lasting ramifications for those living and working along the coast.

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