Ocean conflict and social and environmental sustainability

CBEES Environmental Humanities Seminar (Envhumseminar) with Michael Gilek and Ralph Tafon, The School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University

Speakers: Prof. Michael Gilek and Dr. Ralph Tafon, The School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University.

Discussants: Virginia Brenner Music, Alessandra Giolo, and Oldouz Nejadibabadaei, BEEGS Doctoral Candidates.

Abstract:

OCEANS PACT is an international research project that focuses on finding pathways for sustainable multi-use of ocean resources in specific contexts in the Global North and South (in South Africa, India, Brazil, Norway/Barents Sea, Baltic Sea and United States). We explore deep insights about disagreements regarding the use of our ocean resources and collaboratively find pathways toward economic, social and environmental sustainability for all concerned stakeholders. In that light, we examine how formal interventions, e.g., law, and informal practices such as negotiation, can be harnessed to unlock the transformative potential of disagreements over marine-related values and resources. The present paper is focused on the Baltic Sea case, more specifically an offshore wind energy (OWE) conflict in Estonia. The paper builds a capability and recognition informed multispecies blue justice framework that harnesses ecological reflexivity and proxy representation, decenters anthropocentric frames of justice and fetishization of climate change effects, and foregrounds injustices, human and nonhuman that technological solutions to climate change may create. This framework then informs analysis of a longstanding OWE conflict in Estonia, unraveling emergent social and ecological justice concerns as raised by grassroots actors and environmental “experts”, the knowledge contestations involved, and resolution measures. Next, we consider ways in which the OWE controversy has positively transformed Estonia’s marine planning as a whole, while highlighting remaining challenges, including the likely effects of the formalization of European Union rapid renewable energy proposals on transformations made locally, and prospects for grassroots and “expert” proxy representatives of nature to successfully steer nature-positive, human-centered renewable energy transitions. Last, we elaborate conditions for productive conflict engagement necessary for delivering social and ecological justice alongside transitions to sustainability.