A research project funded by NILS Science and Sustainability (ES07) Programme operated by Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Principal investigator: Dr. Níels Einarsson, anthropologist and Director of the Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland

Main collaborators in Galicia, Spain: Dr. Ramón Muiño Boedo and D. Duarte F-Vidal, Universidade da Coruña

The main rationale for the project is that very little comparative research has been done on social, economic and political implications of the recent international shift towards private property rights regimes in fisheries management. The participants of this project felt was an urgent need to widen the scientific study of marine governance to include the welfare of fishing communities, such as those of Galicia, and the complex relationship between public access, property rights and local resource rights. The topic of fishing and access rights to marine resources is also extremely important to coastal communities in the Arctic, as they are in the rest of the world of fishing societies. One of the major changes taking place, one could call it a social and historical transformation, is the privatization of formerly common property resources, linking local livelihoods and community viability to economic and financial processes of national and global markets. This project builds on ongoing anthropological and interdisciplinary research and deals with some of the aspects of this very rapid social change which is also coupled to global financial processes. The focus is on Iceland and Galicia, with data from other societies and fisheries, but with special emphasis on the fisheries dependent region of Galicia which has a recent history of alternative experiments with local fisheries governance in the form of marine protected areas as well as dealing with the aftermaths of the economic collapse of 2008.

For further information please contact Dr. Níels Einarsson at Þetta tölvupóstfang er varið gegn ruslpóstsþjörkum, Þú verður að hafa JavaScript virkt til að sjá það. .

The EEA supported NILS Science and Sustainability aims to enhance human capital and knowledge base in Spain and in Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, by improving and deepening academic and research collaboration, promoting scientific research on strategic fields for Human well-being and Earth Sustainability.

See here.