From Corals to Corporations : Social-ecological dynamics in the Anthropocene ocean

Sammanfattning: The ocean has always been of paramount importance for the development of human civilisation. Today more than ever, the prospect of a new era of ‘blue growth’ poses great sustainability and governance challenges as marine ecosystems worldwide face unprecedented cumulative pressures from local human impacts, global climate change and distal socioeconomic processes. This licentiate thesis explores entry points for improved ocean sustainability within this new reality.Paper I focuses on the Hawaiian archipelago and hinges on an extensive dataset of 20 anthropogenic and biophysical predictors over 620 survey sites. It uses machine learning to model the occurrence of distinct reef regimes and provide a novel approach to quantify the relative influence of human and environmental variables in shaping marine ecosystems. The findings highlight nuances of what underpins different coral reef regimes, the overwhelming importance of biophysical predictors and how a reef’s natural setting may either expand or narrow the opportunity space for management interventions.Paper II investigates the potential role of the financial sector in global seafood sustainability. It combines content analysis of seafood media literature with descriptive statistics of shareholder ownership to map where along a seafood firm’s development trajectory financial mechanisms are most salient and where leverage points may lie. The paper discusses three mechanisms that could redirect capital towards more sustainable practices – loan covenants, stock exchange’s listing rules and shareholder activism – and argues that their potential is unlikely to be realised unless they systematically integrate sustainability criteria in their operations.