From “Common Pools” to “Fish Pools”: Shifting Property Institutions in Traditional Waters of Norway and Canada

Abstract

Although exclusive common pool resource management regimes have locally been applied since time immemorial in many coastal and fjord areas, in the legal conceptualization of space, the oceans and their living resources were traditionally treated as a “global commons.” The idea of restricting access to coastal oceanic resources and delegating their governance to state instruments has become increasingly popular since the middle of the previous century when political economy models predicted the eventual overexploitation or degradation of all resources used in common. While state jurisdictions overall continue to preserve the idea of common access to marine living resources for a state’s people, the rapid privatization of marine living resources and the subsequent development of aquaculture over the last few decades, often confront this understanding, leading to enclosure of a delineated maritime area that was initially intended to be accessible to the public. Enclosing the sea for the purpose of aquaculture development leads to a semantic change in property institutions that govern coastal areas and provides for a form of enclosure of the commons in key locations designated for marine aquaculture development. This article explores the concept of “ocean commons” and debates how the enclosure of common areas for the purposes of aquaculture development may collide with Indigenous and local conceptions of common pool resource management. The article applies this theoretical investigation on two examples from Canada and Norway, and suggests that rethinking aquaculture development in coastal waters through the lens of “ocean commons” may provide a guiding ethos for revisiting current approaches of access to the sea and ensuring the harmonious coexistence between aquaculture development and local/Indigenous traditional activities.