EMPHASIZING COMMUNITY IN BLUE COMMUNITY GARDENS Exploring the capacity of community-led regenerative ocean farming to contribute to equitable social-ecological resilience

Sammanfattning

The current state, the governance connected to, and our use of the oceans have become increasingly complex and dynamic. Ecological and social circumstances are heavily interrelated (Berkes et al., 2003), but this is seldom regarded as a factor when developing new projects within the realm of the blue development. Regenerative Ocean Farming (ROF) is an emerging concept focused on low-trophic aquaculture, the reduction of negative environmental impacts, and the regeneration of marine habitats (Yong et al., 2022). The aim of this degree project is to explore the capacity of community-led ROF (clROF) to contribute to equitable social-ecological resilience. Informed by previous research on low-trophic aquaculture and empirical data collected through qualitative interviews, the focus lies on social components of clROF and their transformative potential. The Social-Ecological Systems Framework (Ostrom, 2009; McGinnis & Ostrom, 2014) provided a well-suited heuristic to explore the interrelatedness between ecological and communal wellbeing in clROF. With the added emphasis on equitability aspects of resilience the focal points of analysis were capacity for self-organization, social-ecological knowledge sharing and cohesion building. Findings suggest that while clROF could provide many benefits pertaining to equitable resilience, in order for them to enable transformative change, further research, monitoring, and adaptive governance are needed.