“More than fishy business”: epistemology, integration and conflict in marine spatial planning

Abstract

MSP is advanced internationally as a model by which countries can manage their marine environments, and yet ensure economic and social activities remain. It is a “win–win “solution. Yet, as Ellis and Flannery highlight (this issue, pp. 00–00), this optimism can be misplaced, and create distributional and other issues in its implementation. Their call for the articulation of a radical MSP is timely. This paper presents some reflections on how a radical turn in MSP may be achieved and in so doing unseat and shift the key elements of MSP which currently cause the issues Ellis and Flannery outline so well. Firstly, picking up on their point about sectoral integration, I argue that it is the epistemological basis of MSP itself that currently embeds an assumption that it has capacity to enable (sectoral and knowledge) integration. However, it is the very attempt at this integration which often causes imbalances and conflicts in distribution and power. Second, I argue that this assumption needs to be unseated and suggest that embedding a conflict lens as part of the implementation of MSP process could have transformative potential, most particularly in its capacity to distil and draw out different cultural mores for, and uses of the marine estate. Finally, I argue for a MSP process that embraces different world views, in ways that can actually go some way to achieving the sectoral harmony which the model tries so hard to achieve.