ABSTRACT
The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures.
ABSTRACT
The global crisis instantiated by the COVID-19 pandemic opens a unique governance window to transform the sustainability, resilience, and ethics of the global seafood industry. Simultaneously crippling public health, civil liberties, and national economies, the global pandemic has exposed the diverse values and identities of actors upon which global food systems pivot, as well as their interconnectivity with other economic sectors and spheres of human activity. In the wake of COVID-19, ethics offers a timely conceptual reframing and methodological approach to navigate these diverse values and identities and to reconcile their ensuing policy trade-offs and conflicts. Values and identities denote complex concepts and realities, characterized by plurality, fluidity and dynamics, ambiguity, and implicitness, which often hamper responsive policy-setting and effective governance. Rather than adopt a static characterization of specific value or identity types, I introduce a novel hierarchical conceptualization of values and identities made salient by scale and context. I illustrate how salient values and identities emerge at multiple scales through three seafood COVID-19 contextual examples in India, Canada, and New Zealand, where diverse seafood actors interact within local, domestic (regional/national), and global seafood value chains, respectively. These examples highlight the differential values and identities, and hence differential vulnerabilities, resilience, and impacts on seafood actors with the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitate differentiated policy interventions if they are to be responsive to those affected. An ethical governance framework that integrates diverse marine values and identities, buttressed by concrete deliberation and decision-support protocols and tools, can transform the modus operandi of global seafood systems toward both sustainable and ethical development.
ABSTRACT
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0196307.].
ABSTRACT
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0196307.].
ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes the trophic role of Pacific herring, the potential consequences of its depletion, and the impacts of alternative herring fishing strategies on a Northeast Pacific food web in relation to precautionary, ecosystem-based management. We used an Ecopath with Ecosim ecosystem model parameterized for northern British Columbia (Canada), employing Ecosim to simulate ecosystem effects of herring stock collapse. The ecological impacts of various herring fishing strategies were investigated with a Management Strategy Evaluation algorithm within Ecosim, accounting for variability in climatic drivers and stock assessment errors. Ecosim results suggest that herring stock collapse would have cascading impacts on much of the pelagic food web. Management Strategy Evaluation results indicate that herring and their predators suffer moderate impacts from the existing British Columbia harvest control rule, although more precautionary management strategies could substantially reduce these impacts. The non-capture spawn-on-kelp fishery, traditionally practiced by many British Columbia and Alaska indigenous peoples, apparently has extremely limited ecological impacts. Our simulations also suggest that adopting a maximum sustainable yield management strategy in Northeast Pacific herring fisheries could generate strong, cascading food web effects. Furthermore, climate shifts, especially when combined with herring stock assessment errors, could strongly reduce the biomasses and resilience of herring and its predators. By clarifying the trophic role of Pacific herring, this study aims to facilitate precautionary fisheries management via evaluation of alternative fishing strategies, and thereby to inform policy tradeoffs among multiple ecological and socioeconomic factors.
