Media coverage of international climate negotiations: assessing the ethical dimension of the global debate

This study explores the mediatisation of political challenges involved in addressing climate change, in particular relation to the United Nations framework in place to tackle the issue. Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time and extensive international collaboration is required in order to deal with it appropriately. Due to the nature of climate change, this thesis argues that ethical considerations should be at the core of public debates. Addressing climate change will require the implementation of drastic and often expensive measures, which might be particularly challenging to ‘western’ way of life. The media provides a crucial forum for debating the challenges climate change poses to our societies. This thesis examines how the issue is represented in the television and print media in three European countries: the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Faroe Islands during two global conferences on climate change,COP15 and COP16. This is backed up by examination of the ideal role of the media within liberal democracies and how such a role can be used as a benchmark against which to measure coverage. The thesis applies an ethical lens to the three different national media and their treatment of climate change to explore how the issue is made meaningful to the public. It examines the prominence of different ethical arguments – divided into cosmopolitan and communitarian positions - within public debates on climate change. It develops a comprehensive framework that identifies the key issues in the debate over climate change, and how ethical positions figure within them. Through the application of this analytical framework, this thesis seeks to shed light on the overall quality of public debate on the main issues around climate change in the respective countries. It also considers the extent to which media coverage in the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Faroe Islands could represent an emerging transnational public sphere on climate change. These questions are addressed through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of climate change coverage. The approach deployed means that the study is able to examine in a systematic fashion how values underpin the debate on climate change in the respective countries. This thesis also brings a much needed comparative dimension to the analysis of media coverage of climate change. The findings demonstrate that political ideology plays a stronger role in shaping coverage in the UK context, whilst its role is less significant in Denmark and the Faroe Islands. The analysis also identifies some strong similarities in coverage across the countries, both with respect to the quantity of coverage, the topics and values emphasised. In addition, the thesis concludes that coverage across the three countries could indicate an emerging transnational public sphere on climate change

Evaluation of the governance structures of the cases

This report contains an evaluation of the governance structures of the EU long-distance fishing fleet in the six case studies of the FarFish project. These case studies include two high seas fisheries and four fisheries that are based on Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPAs) between the EU and coastal states. All of these fisheries are important for the fishing fleets of multiple EU countries or respond to the priorities of Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) and the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). The report focuses on different aspects of both the structural and actor conditions, in particular focusing on monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) of the EU external fishing fleet. For each of the four SFPAs, we present the requirements set within the SFPAs, the legal framework and systems for MCS in the coastal state and their capacity. For the high seas cases, we present the governing framework of the area where such is in place and the practice of managing the EU fleet. For all cases, challenges of and measures to mitigate by-catch and discard issues and IUU fishing are presented. Lastly, we summaries the main findings regarding both achievements and identified challenges for the six case studies. This report is based on available data and synthesizes already existing information. It will function as a primer for further studies in the FarFish project of the governance structure of the EU fisheries outside Europe

Analysing uncertainties in socio-economic assessments of fisheries and aquaculture under climate change

Socio-economic analysis of seafood production is important for the conservation of aquatic ecosystems and the management of fisheries and aquaculture activities. Understanding how the livelihoods of people, dependent on the exploitation of aquatic resources, are affected by various changes is essential for decision making. The two main seafood production sectors, fisheries and aquaculture are fundamentally different. Whilst fishing is an extremely uncertain and complex system that operates in an ecological context where constant interactions between biology, ecology, climate, economics and sociology take place (FAO, 2017), aquaculture normally takes place in a considerably more controlled and contained production setting within the ecosystem. However, climate change will likely impact both sectors in various ways. This study presents how uncertainty is considered within the socio-economic assessments of two important economic activities in the Northeast Atlantic, one the salmon aquaculture operation in countries such as Norway, Scotland and the Faroe Islands and the pelagic fisheries in EU, Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic waters. A novel approach in our assessment is the consideration of the uncertainties of input factors as consequences of climate change, resource abundance, technology, operators’ behaviour, market conditions, harvesting efficiency, governance policy, and socio-economic status of communities. Data collected by individual surveys and secondary sources are described as statistic distributions that are used for Monte Carlo simulations. Our simulation models enable researchers to predict the likelihoods of occurrence of socio-economic outcomes, and the contributions and sensitiveness of input variables to the profitability of seafood production and the gross value added to the economy

European Seafood Production under Climate Change: Assessing Economic and Social Consequences

Climate change has been observed to have a significant impact on the distribution of aquatic species and productivity of aquaculture systems across the globe. This affects the level of food production, the livelihoods of communities that depend on fisheries and aquaculture, and the future sustainability of these sectors. As in all other parts of the world, climate change will have inequitable and diverse impacts on economic growth across Europe, creating winners and losers. The European H2020 project ClimeFish investigates the impacts of climate change in aquatic food production at the European and regional scale, for the three main production sectors: marine fisheries, lakes and ponds and marine aquaculture. ClimeFish has developed a process for conducting socio-economic impact assessment by first identifying the effect(s) of climate change on the biological properties of both fish and aquaculture species, and secondly assessing the socio-economic impacts based on these biological forecasts, collecting additional socio-economic data and feedback from relevant stakeholders. Here, we provide an overview of the methods and work conducted in seven different case studies will be provided, focusing on both opportunities and threats within the three sectors and geographical locations around Europe as well as a European wide analysis. Challenges related to the data collection and analysis, as well as potential ways of overcoming them, are discussed