How is Unilateral Trade-Based Policy Adopted and Integrated from the Perspective of Receiving Countries? Applying EU IUU Regulation in Thailand

In this chapter we present the case of Thailand as an example of how the EU is becoming a global core actor in problematizing and shaping the discourse around IUU fishing through bilateral dialogue and trade measures. We argue that studying the EU IUU dialogue allows us to understand how unilateral trade-based policies are adopted and integrated. The way the EU operationalises its IUU regulations reflects a concern regarding labour standards in trade policy, as part of a broader EU political agenda. EU market measures have shown impactful policy interventions in Thailand. The policy-diffusion lens reveals three emerging implications. First, the EU has applied an IUU regulation on fish stocks in order to bring exporting countries in line with EU policy for their domestic fleets. Second, the Thailand case illustrates a non-harmonized, context-driven policy diffusion of EU IUU regulation by introducing labour/human rights as an essential part of the reform. Third, the the Thai case exemplifies how policy diffusion is dependent on ‘the other’, non-EU third countries, for implementation. Finally, without including key stakeholders in development of the Thai reforms, e.g. fish workers, boat owners and processing actors, the sustainability of the reforms is in question

Sustainable Networks: Modes of governance in the EU's external fisheries policy relations under the IUU Regulation in Thailand and the SFPA with Senegal

The EU envisions itself as a global leader in sustainable fisheries governance. This paper explores how two key policies seek to implement these aspirations internationally - the Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) regulation and the Sustainable Fishing Partnership Agreements (SFPAs). We draw on case studies in Thailand and Senegal to examine the specific mechanisms through which the EU influences fisheries governance beyond its territory, respectively through the IUU regulation and SFPAs. Drawing on normative power literature, we argue that the EU utilises network and market modes of governance to translate normative environmental values into third country regulations as part of dialogue and negotiation processes. In particular, we expand on the functioning of the network mode of governance by looking at how the EU has used socialisation and partnership approaches to promote certain values during its dialogues with both countries. In Thailand, the EU helped promote fisheries reform through its IUU yellow card mechanism, but its influence has at times been criticised as too directive. Meanwhile, the latest iteration of the EU's bilateral fishing relations with Senegal under the new SFPA scheme shows promising improvement compared to previous versions, but remains complicated by the two countries' relative power imbalance. Overall, our paper seeks to enrich the engagement of fisheries governance literature with questions of EU relations with third countries. Our two case studies demonstrate how exploring the functioning of normative aspects is significant particularly because the advancement of sustainability in global fisheries depends on concrete, historically complex, and multilaterally constructed power relations

From fish to fishworker traceability in Thai fisheries reform

This paper explores the question of what traceability systems mean for the labour situation of fishworkers; for whom and in what respects is traceability effective, and what impact do these systems have? The limited social criteria in fishery governance is a core reason for recurrent problems of extreme abuse of fishworkers around the world, including trafficking, forced labour and so called modern slavery. New traceability systems, thus, now include social criteria to advance sustainable fisheries globally. Drawing from a Thai fisheries reform case study, we analyse how the new labour traceability system emerges and is perceived by migrant fishworkers. We base our analysis on interviews, documents and two periods of fieldwork in Thailand. We argue that labour traceability is a double-edged sword. While fishworkers have seen major improvement in limiting extreme abuse, labour traceability has a downsides of state surveillance and costs passed onto workers. Moreover, traceability does not solve underlying problems regarding the complex formalization of migrant workers, working conditions on fishing boats, freedom to change employer or the everyday vulnerability of being a migrant worker. Thus, while labour traceability has promising policy relevance for the integration of labour rights into fisheries governance, it requires contextual underpinning in migrant circumstances

Scoping study on migrant fishers and transboundary fishing in the Bay of Bengal

This study assesses the issue of migratory and transboundary fishing. It explores working conditions on fishing vessels operating outside national waters together with issues pertaining to rights and extent of use of legal and illegal foreign labour. The report also provides recommendations for action and further research

Thai Labour NGOs during the ‘Modern Slavery’ Reforms: NGO Transitions in a Post-aid World

This article explores how domestic NGOs responded to new opportunities that emerged during the 2015-2020 'modern slavery' labour reforms in Thailand's seafood sector. The analysis takes place against the background of civil society transitions in a 'post-aid' setting. Like NGOs in other middle-income countries, the Thai NGO sector has struggled to remain relevant and financially viable in recent decades, as international donors have withdrawn from countries with steadily declining poverty rates. As a result of the 'developmental successes' of Thailand, the NGO sector needed to rethink its strategies. Examining the modern slavery labour reform process provides an opportunity to understand the strategic choices available to NGOs in the face of several important phenomena: the emergence of new actors such as international philanthropic donors; the growing influence of the private sector in governance matters; and the need for NGOs to balance multiple strategic alliances. The article draws on in-depth interviews to explore narratives of Thai labour NGO adjustments during the period of the modern slavery reform. The study contributes to a better understanding of how NGOs in post-aid countries transition and adapt to changing circumstances by embracing new roles as 'sub-contractors' for emerging global philanthropic donors and as 'partners' of private corporations

Private governance of human and labor rights in seafood supply chains:The case of the modern slavery crisis in Thailand

A growing recognition of human rights in business has shed light on labor violations and abusive practices that prevail in many global supply chains. The recent 'modern slavery' crisis in the Thai fishing industry not only brings the question of government's responsibility to the fore but also increasingly highlights the role of private governance in global supply chains. This paper provides an updated analysis on the state of labor rights protection in the Thai fishing industry by analyzing responses from private business and civil society to the modern slavery scandal. We focus on three responses in particular: ethical recruitment policies, worker grievance mechanisms and worker associations. We analyse the effectiveness of these responses and delineate the potential of private governance as well as the limits that need to be overcome to ensure the protection of human and labor rights in global seafood supply chains

The capacity to adapt?: communities in a changing climate, environment, and economy on the northern Andaman coast of Thailand

The health and productivity of marine ecosystems, habitats, and fisheries are deteriorating on the Andaman coast of Thailand. Because of their high dependence on natural resources and proximity to the ocean, coastal communities are particularly vulnerable to climate-induced changes in the marine environment. These communities must also adapt to the impacts of management interventions and conservation initiatives, including marine protected areas, which have livelihood implications. Further, communities on the Andaman coast are also experiencing a range of new economic opportunities associated in particular with tourism and agriculture. These complex and ongoing changes require integrated assessment of, and deliberate planning to increase, the adaptive capacity of communities so that they may respond to: (1) environmental degradation and fisheries declines through effective management interventions or conservation initiatives, (2) new economic opportunities to reduce dependence on fisheries, and (3) the increasing impacts of climate change. Our results are from a mixed methods study, which used surveys and interviews to examine multiple dimensions of the adaptive capacity of seven island communities near marine protected areas on the Andaman coast of Thailand. Results show that communities had low adaptive capacity with respect to environmental degradation and fisheries declines, and to management and conservation interventions, as well as uneven levels of adaptive capacity to economic opportunities. Though communities and households were experiencing the impacts of climate change, especially storm events, changing seasons and weather patterns, and erosion, they were reacting to these changes with limited knowledge of climate change per se. We recommend interventions, in the form of policies, programs, and actions, at multiple scales for increasing the adaptive capacity of Thailand’s coastal communities to change. The analytical and methodological approach used for examining adaptive capacity could be easily modified and applied to other contexts and locales

Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers?

It is not just the world but our ways of producing knowledge that are in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed our interconnected vulnerabilities in ways never seen before while underscoring the need for emancipation in particular from the hegemonic knowledge politics that underpin “business-as-usual” academic research that have both contributed to and failed to address the systemic challenges laid bare by the pandemic. Political ecologists tasked with knowledge generation on vulnerabilities and their underlying power processes are particularly well placed to envision such emancipatory processes. While pausing physically due to travel restrictions, as researchers in political ecology and rural development at the same university department, we want to make a stop to radically rethink our intellectual engagements. In this article, we aim to uncover “sanitized” aspects of research encounters, and theorize on the basis of anecdotes, feelings and informal discussions—“data” that is often left behind in fieldwork notes and personal diaries of researchers—, the ways in which our own research practices hamper or can be conducive to emancipation in times of multiple interconnected health, political, social, and environmental crises. We do so through affective autoethnography and resonances on our research encounters during the pandemic: with people living in Swedish Sapmi, with African students in our own “Global North” university department and with research partners in Nepal. We use a threefold focus on interconnectedness, uncertainty and challenging hegemonic knowledge politics as our analytical framework. We argue that acknowledging the roles of emotions and affect can 1) help embrace interconnectedness in research encounters; 2) enable us to work with uncertainty rather than “hard facts” in knowledge production processes; and 3) contribute to challenging hegemonic knowledge production. Opening up for emotions in research helps us to embrace the relational character of vulnerability as a pathway to democratizing power relations and to move away from its oppressive and colonial modes still present in universities and research centers. Our aim is to contribute to envisioning post-Covid-19 political ecology and rural development research that is critically reflexive and that contributes to the emergence of a new ethics of producing knowledge. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (Roy, 2020

Lessons from Thailand and Australia on the Diffusion of Anti-IUU Fishing Trade Policy

This book presents a study of the effects of the policy on non-EU countries’ efforts to control IUU fishing. Discursive analysis of Thailand and Australia as receivers of EU anti-IUU fisheries trade policy provides understanding towards the makeup, trajectory and outcomes of the spread of EU IUU policy. The two previous chapters have provided in-depth accounts based on primary data of Thailand and Australia. These chapters answer two core questions: ‘to what extent will trade-based measures successfully spread to other countries?' and ‘what are some of the processes involved in adopting such an approach?' In this chapter, we draw on policy diffusion and policy translation literature to explore the two cases together. Our analysis shows that while Thailand’s experiences of the EU’s anti-IUU trade regulation can be characterised as a coercive type of policy diffusion, with implications for the ways the policy has taken shape on the ground, Australia’s a potential as a ‘receiver’ of policy diffusion is through learning or emulation mechanisms. We conclude that the Thai and Australian cases support strands of the policy diffusion literature that emphasise that policies travel for normative and politically driven reasons, and not only as a rational, technocratic uptake of evidence-based best practice

More than just a carding system: Labour implications of the EU's illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing policy in Thailand

Globally, the EU plays a leading role in combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities. Specifically, the EU exercises normative power to influence regulatory strategies and governing frameworks in third countries. In 2015, the EU issued Thailand a yellow card, indicating that economic sanctions would be implemented unless IUU fishing practices were eliminated. Concurrently, revelations about 'modern slavery' in Thailand's fishing industry had received international attention, through media and NGOs, exposing slavery-like practices among migrant fishworkers. Conventionally, the EU's IUU policy addresses only issues of catch and environmental sustainability. This paper explores how an initial bilateral dialogue was bifurcated into two dialogues: a Fishery Dialogue and a Labour Dialogue. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with involved actors, expert opinions, field-visits and secondary documents, we ask: How were labour issues integrated into the bilateral dialogue, and what consequences emerged from the IUU policy for Thai fisheries management? Tracing the bilateral dialogue between EU and Thai governments, we argue that Thailand's fisheries reform was a result of both fisheries' sustainability concerns and the kind of labour rights valued by the EU. Our Normative Power Europe approach shows how norms of labour rights shaped the reform through policies and implementation. We maintain that this unique case-study reveals how the EU incorporates a broad-based normative approach that goes beyond catch sustainability