Bringing a justice lens to ocean access

Abstract

Maritime spaces have transformed rapidly the last decades. Open waters and beaches have become restricted and sometimes privatized enclosures. Different forms of extractivism have led to biodiversity loss and in particular to declining fish populations. Additionally, large-scale coastal and marine infrastructure projects, such as deepening and widening of shipping channels, have destroyed important habitats. These profound socio-ecological transformations have had an impact on geographies of resource access and control and consequently on the ability of actors to access, use and benefit from coastal and marine space. Moreover, changes in the lending policies of local banks have posed additional and severe challenges for fishers’ ability to fish. Such processes effect in particular the livelihoods of coastal and small-scale fisher communities and consequently increase existing inequalities and injustices. We suggest to bring the literature on ocean justice and access and property into dialogue and develop a heuristic for analysing inequalities and justice claims. Based on qualitative case studies focussing on the Sicily (Italy), the Elbe estuary (Germany) and the Lofoten (Norway), we show that investigating access relations facilitates the identification of unequal societal relationships with nature. Our cases illustrate that power relations in which privatization processes and access relations are embedded, determine whether injustices can be translated into justice claims and how successful these claims are. Moreover, unequal socio-ecological relations are also influenced by what we call translocal justice. Translocal justice is often lost in processes of commodification, privatization and in the rescaling of political authority and power, as local ties and confidential relationships vanish.