Author Biography
Instructor and Senior Sustainability Scientist at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University; PhD in Political Science from the University of California at Irvine. His Research interests include international illicit flows, energy subsidies, and the black and gray markets in dual-use nuclear technology.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.4.1869
Subject Area Keywords
Gangs and criminal organizations, Globalization and global change, Natural resources and security, Transnational crime
Abstract
Climate change, combined with rising global demand for seafood products, will lead to greater conflict over remaining fisheries. Warming and acidifying oceans are shifting the availability of oxygen and nutrients that are necessary to maintain fish stocks. These changes are likely to increase conflict, both interstate and intrastate, in several important ways. For one, the fish stocks that are already under stress from demand for seafood protein are also shifting location. Most significantly, scarcity will likely draw in greater state involvement in fisheries. As traditional fleets exhaust their territorial waters, domestic political pressure will lead to greater state investment in distant water fishing (DWF) fleets to access fish stocks on the high seas and in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of other states. DWF fleets are destabilizing because they can easily access fishing zones with low levels of enforcement. Their industrial scale and low level of transparency means that they are also more likely to engage in Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing activities. States are also more likely to intervene militarily to protect their state-support DWF fleets.
Recommended Citation
Kelman, Jonathan H.C.. "Why Climate Change and State Subsidies Will Collide to Create Fishery Conflict." Journal of Strategic Security 13, no. 4 (2020)
: 96-108.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.4.1869
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol13/iss4/7
