Neoliberalism in the oceans: “rationalization,” property rights, and the commons question

Pimping Climate Change: Richard Branson, Global Warming, and the Performance of Green Capitalism

“…For example, Malthus (1993Malthus ( [1798), in addition to his (in)famous embrace of famine and disease as`natural' or what he called`preventive' checks on population growth, also stated that:`i t appears, that a society constituted according to the most beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its moving principle, instead of self-love, and with every evil disposition in all its members corrected by reason and not force, would, from the inevitable laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man [sic], in a very short period degenerate into a society constructed upon a plan not essentially different from that which prevails in every known state at present; I mean, a society divided into a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers, and with self-love the main-spring of the great machine'' (Malthus, 1993(Malthus, [1798, pages 64^65). There is, of course, much more to be said about green capitalism, its origins, and a proliferation of market fundamentalism in contemporary environmental policy making (see eg Goldman, 2005;Heynen et al, 2007;Krueger and Gibbs, 2007;Liverman, 2004;McAfee, 1999;Mansfield, 2004a;2004b;. But the point is that markets, more or less accurate prices, enclosures of various kinds, a faith in the choices of ostensibly independent and rational individuals, and investment of capital by innovative entrepreneurs constitute the ubiquitous tropes of green capitalism.…”

Marine Protected Areas: Territorializing Objects and Subjectivities

“…Steinberg (2001) traces the ways in which the oceans have gradually been enfolded into state territory (see also Mansfield, 2004) with large portions still remaining Mare Liberum under international law. While Nietschmann argues for a move towards a territory on behalf of an indigenous people, he fails to address the obstacle of the imaginary of the sea as empty space.…”

“…Ecological reserves are a common and contested practice on land as governance is transformed from customary to state control (Neumann, 1998;Igoe, 2004;Brockington, Duffy and Igoe, 2008). The effects of marine conservation as territorialization have been addressed to some degree within the MPA literature, which notes that reserves have been contested due to a "fencing of the sea" (National Research Council, 2001;Steinberg, 2001;Mansfield, 2004). By attempting conservation through a territorial tactic, reserves adopt a spatially fixed preservationist stance, while arguing towards a general environmental concern (Rome, 2001), within a techno-scientific network of relations and connections "…linking together nature, society, technology, science, markets, and policy in new ways" (Johnsen et al, 2004).…”

“…Critical geographic scholarship on marine management suggests that the first step in managing the oceans as a national resource works by enclosing the space of the oceans, and transferring territorial control of the ocean to the state (Mansfield, 2001(Mansfield, , 2004. State control of the oceans then works in ways that transform the access rights of users, often with little consideration of how fishers themselves spatially may practice extraction of marine resources (St. Martin, 2001, 2006.…”

Blue growth: savior or ocean grabbing?

“…In the past couple of decades, policy debates around the fisheries resource specifically have shaped the evolution of approaches to ocean governance more broadly (Mansfield 2004). Academic and policy discussions on fisheries have for decades been dominated by a view that reduces environmental and economic crises in fish stocks to first and foremost a result of 'too many boats chasing too few fish' -a common quip in fisheries policy debates.…”