The tangled politics of 'sustainability interdependence': Aquaculture, sustainability, territory, regulation and knowledge

European fish farming aquaculture - the farming of fish in the sea or in freshwater - is not an industry with which most people are particularly familiar. Yet, the recent growth of this industry is crystallizing fundamental questions exercising society and which speak to everyday concerns. As well as ocean health, biodiversity and local food security, fish farming aquaculture touches on coastal management, tourism and natural heritage. In our changing world, this industry promises a lot. Yet, this promise has been hotly contested. Indeed, although fish farming has existed for centuries in some parts of the world where its practices have been naturalised as traditional and cultural (Gibbs, 2009), its recent intensive growth following biotechnological innovation has launched new debates on the purpose and outcomes of this industry. Deep tensions splice these debates - on fish farming's environmental impact, on its consequences for coastal and rural economies and natural landscapes, on its contribution to food and fish sustainability.\nIn this context, a large scholarship has grown up around fish farming's general controversies and especially within the domains of ecology, fish nutrition, animal health and welfare, human health, economics and policy sciences. More recently, important contributions have also been made from political economy, sociology, human geography, anthropology and law. This scholarship has framed, participated in and indeed perpetuated debates on fish farming's very purpose. Strong images and ways of thinking about this industry have been built through this research which has contributed to the analysis of numerous ecological, technological, market and policy issues linked to this industry on a global scale.\nWhereas a multitude of disciplines have invested in fish farming aquaculture, this has not been the case for political science. Indeed, core political science research questions on actors and power have rarely been applied to the study of European fish farming and comparative politics of European fish farming have not (yet!) generated debates either in the political science community or beyond. It follows that although scholars have identified conflicts and tensions within this industry (e.g., in Norway, Tiller et al, 2012; in Canada, Noakes et al, 2003); revealed the market consequences of political battles over fish farming's sustainability (e.g. in European markets, Bush and Duijf, 2011; Bush et al, 2009); and pointed to the potential effectiveness of smart regulatory policy tools (e.g., in Canada, Howlett and Rayner, 2004), there has been little comparative analysis either of actual governing practices or of policy directions chosen in different European territories. As a result, we lack insight on the deeply political aspects of governing European fish farming aquaculture, including on how European fish farming is both structured by and structuring of politics. An underlying aim of this HDR is to respond to this challenge. Rather than just assuming that the politics of fish farming aquaculture are 'well known', the HDR makes the case for treating the governing of this industry as meriting attention in its own right. Developing and applying an original analytical framework of 'sustainability interdependence', the HDR generates new data on the governing of Scottish salmon, Aquitaine trout and Greek seabass and seabream in relation to three sustainability challenges: i) interactions between fish farming and the environment; ii) interrelations between the continued growth of European fish farming and rural and coastal territorial development; iii) farmed fish as sustainable food. Throughout a particular aim of this HDR is to reappraise sustainability governing through emphasising what I have called 'sustainability interdependence'. Sustainability is of course a widely analysed concept which at its base recognises important interdependencies between society and nature (Hopwood et al, 2005: 40). Yet, for some scholars, tensions between meeting societal goals and preventing environmental degradation have become so great that they regard sustainability to be obsolete as a concept and a policy programme (Benson and Craig, 2014). Although this is not the starting point of the HDR, which recognises that sustainability continues to shape actors and their action, nevertheless I agree that our analysis of it requires reappraisal in light of the complexity of current environmental challenges. More specifically, drawing upon long standing premises of public policy analysis highlighting the importance of policy-polity tensions in public action transformation, the HDR argues that sustainability requires both updating as a concept and recomposing as part of a broader theory of political change. To meet these objectives, the HDR builds an original analytical model of 'sustainability interdependence'. The HDR argues that in political struggles over sustainability, ecological issues are not only brought into relation with economic and social ones (classic sustainable development), but also into relation with other interdependencies on-going in the political system. These are i) interdependencies between territories (brought about through processes of globalisation and regionalisation); ii) interdependencies between public and private regulation (following from changing relations between states and markets); iii) interdependencies between different knowledge forms (resulting from the democratisation of knowledge use in decision-making). Moreover, it is through seizing these broader interdependencies that actors have managed to open up new spaces for putting in place alternative sustainability governing approaches - and in so doing alter fish farming's relationship to the environment. Examining the governing of fish farming through the lens of 'sustainability interdependence' therefore allows for the development of a nuanced critique of its governing practices, offering new understandings of both successes and failures in governing. In so doing, the HDR abandons polemic discussions on fish farming aquaculture - either 'for' or 'against' it - and opens up new ways for debating this industry's past, present and future. / L'HDR génère de nouvelles connaissances sur la gouvernance de la pisciculture en Ecosse, Aquitaine et Grèce (saumon, truite, bar, dorade) en renouvelant l'analyse des enjeux environnementaux liés à la durabilité à travers le prisme des «interdépendances » politiques.

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