It’s not about the fish: multi-scalar governance in the western and central Pacific Ocean

This thesis examines multi-scalar governance of common pool resources in the western and centralPacific. Shifts towards the reconfiguration and rearticulation of the state across spatial scales havecreated new geographies of governance. Ascertaining whether this reconfiguration toward postsovereignforms of governance has built the resiliency of environmental management systems is ofcritical importance. Governance and/for the sustainable development of highly migratory fisherieshas led to new emergent state spaces at regional levels (through Regional Fisheries ManagementOrganisations) furthering power and control over local resources and as such, environmentaldegradation.Employing post-structural political ecology and concepts of scalar politics as an epistemologicalframework, I examine how multi-scalar governance of fugitive common pool resources is shaped bypolitics and scalar processes. In doing so this thesis involved two strands of inquiry; firstly, to explorehow governance reconfigures environmental, social and economic scalar fixes by examining reformsand exploring cross-scale linkages within multi-scalar governance assemblages; and secondly,discursive struggles over resources are examined through sustainable development as a discursiveregime. An inductive qualitative methodological approach was engaged that involved an intrinsiccase study comprising semi-structured interviews with research participants involved in thegovernance of tuna in the WCPO, observation and participant observation, textual analysis, coding,discourse analysis and quantitative analysis.Governance of transboundary tuna resources was found to be more concerned with economic andpolitical interests, and, perhaps surprisingly, not the fish. Power and its relations were revealed ascentral to multi-scalar governance in the western and central Pacific. This research emphasises theimportance of understanding who has power; in this case distant water fishing nations, who promotepost-sovereign forms of governance and reify grand narratives of the tragedy of the commons. Moreimportantly was the notion of who resists power. In this instance Parties to the Nauru Agreementhave mobilised scale for self-determinism and advanced nuanced approaches to neoliberal institutionsfor fisheries governance. Such displays of entrepreneurship have provided a unique way ofreconciling sustainability and development. The research showed that environmental phenomena arepower-laden upon multiple scales in a global web of human-environmental linkages where changevibrates throughout the whole system. Unequal global distributions of power and the influences ofneoliberal strategies have influenced governance in the western and central Pacific Ocean.Simultaneously, Oceania represent emergent formed solidarity and empowerment in the face of sucheconomic colonialism and have successfully influenced conservation and management of highlymigratory tuna.