Plundering the conflict fish: legitimacy, territory-making, and fisheries extractivism in Western Sahara
(2024) SGEM08 20231Department of Human Geography
- Abstract
- With an annual production of 1.4 million tonnes of fish, Morocco is currently the largest seafood producer in African and Arab countries. However, a vast majority of fish labelled as Moroccan come from the maritime zone of Western Sahara, the last non-self-governing territory in Africa that has been occupied by Morocco since 1975. Furthermore, the fish stock off the Western Saharan coast is at the edge of depletion after decades of intensive harvesting. In contrast to the tenets of neoclassical economics that conceive the ocean as a space of open access, this thesis aims to understand the nuanced relationship between fisheries governance, military occupation, and ecological crisis in the coastal area of Western Sahara through a qualitative... (More)
- With an annual production of 1.4 million tonnes of fish, Morocco is currently the largest seafood producer in African and Arab countries. However, a vast majority of fish labelled as Moroccan come from the maritime zone of Western Sahara, the last non-self-governing territory in Africa that has been occupied by Morocco since 1975. Furthermore, the fish stock off the Western Saharan coast is at the edge of depletion after decades of intensive harvesting. In contrast to the tenets of neoclassical economics that conceive the ocean as a space of open access, this thesis aims to understand the nuanced relationship between fisheries governance, military occupation, and ecological crisis in the coastal area of Western Sahara through a qualitative content analysis of official documents and semi-structured interviews. By applying international fisheries access agreements and conditions of free trade to Western Sahara, Morocco’s sovereignty claim to this territory is implicitly recognised by the EU, Japan, and Russia. Serving as a modern landed property, the Moroccan state not only appropriates resource rent from the fish stock but also benefits discursively and ideologically from the fishing industry to fulfil its political objectives in Western Sahara. With the announcement of Plan Halieutis in 2009, Morocco aims to upgrade the fishing industry in Western Sahara more proactively. By embracing the discourse of “blue growth”, a narrative of regional development under Morocco’s claimed territorial integrity has dominated the fisheries policies in Western Sahara, obscuring the indigenous Sahrawi people’s struggles for self-determination and permanent sovereignty over natural resources. Meanwhile, envisioning the pelagic stock in Western Saharan waters as a frontier for capital accumulation, the Moroccan state stimulates industrial fisheries and export-oriented fish processing industry in Western Sahara through the reallocation of fishing opportunities and large-scale investments in infrastructure. Consequently, small-scale fishers are deprived of their livelihoods and marine habitats are disrupted by intensified fishing efforts. From a theoretical perspective, the case of Western Saharan fisheries presented in this thesis suggests that the reinforcement of state power, the accumulation of capital, and the production of nature are mutually constituted in the world-ecological regime of global capitalism. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9147597
- author
- Yin, Guohan LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SGEM08 20231
- year
- 2024
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Western Sahara, Morocco, Plan Halieutis, international fisheries access agreements, permanent sovereignty over natural resources, fisheries extractivism
- language
- English
- id
- 9147597
- date added to LUP
- 2024-02-05 12:02:22
- date last changed
- 2024-02-05 12:02:22
@misc{9147597,
abstract = {{With an annual production of 1.4 million tonnes of fish, Morocco is currently the largest seafood producer in African and Arab countries. However, a vast majority of fish labelled as Moroccan come from the maritime zone of Western Sahara, the last non-self-governing territory in Africa that has been occupied by Morocco since 1975. Furthermore, the fish stock off the Western Saharan coast is at the edge of depletion after decades of intensive harvesting. In contrast to the tenets of neoclassical economics that conceive the ocean as a space of open access, this thesis aims to understand the nuanced relationship between fisheries governance, military occupation, and ecological crisis in the coastal area of Western Sahara through a qualitative content analysis of official documents and semi-structured interviews. By applying international fisheries access agreements and conditions of free trade to Western Sahara, Morocco’s sovereignty claim to this territory is implicitly recognised by the EU, Japan, and Russia. Serving as a modern landed property, the Moroccan state not only appropriates resource rent from the fish stock but also benefits discursively and ideologically from the fishing industry to fulfil its political objectives in Western Sahara. With the announcement of Plan Halieutis in 2009, Morocco aims to upgrade the fishing industry in Western Sahara more proactively. By embracing the discourse of “blue growth”, a narrative of regional development under Morocco’s claimed territorial integrity has dominated the fisheries policies in Western Sahara, obscuring the indigenous Sahrawi people’s struggles for self-determination and permanent sovereignty over natural resources. Meanwhile, envisioning the pelagic stock in Western Saharan waters as a frontier for capital accumulation, the Moroccan state stimulates industrial fisheries and export-oriented fish processing industry in Western Sahara through the reallocation of fishing opportunities and large-scale investments in infrastructure. Consequently, small-scale fishers are deprived of their livelihoods and marine habitats are disrupted by intensified fishing efforts. From a theoretical perspective, the case of Western Saharan fisheries presented in this thesis suggests that the reinforcement of state power, the accumulation of capital, and the production of nature are mutually constituted in the world-ecological regime of global capitalism.}},
author = {{Yin, Guohan}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Plundering the conflict fish: legitimacy, territory-making, and fisheries extractivism in Western Sahara}},
year = {{2024}},
}