| After years of development,China’s fisheries and aquaculture industry has laid a solid economic foundation by successively addressing the difficulties of catching fish,raising fish,and eating fish,with relevant management measures being constantly improved.The principal contradiction in this area has evolved from the issues surrounding basic livelihoods(i.e.food and income)to those concerning habitat conservation,human rights,gender equality,property rights and other high-level needs.Under this premise,however,fisheries and aquaculture ethics has not received due attention in China,which focuses more on "hard" aspects such as management and law,while neglecting the "soft law" role of ethics.Nevertheless,a number of fish-related activities carried out both by the government and in civial society have shown distinct ethical characteristics,and value identification and ranking are essential for multi-objective governance.Ushering in the new era,the research on ethics is no longer a “castle in the air”,but an "east wind" as everything else is ready.Conventional fisheries and aquaculture management focuses on making institutional breakthroughs at the policy and legal levels.Those policies and laws are indeed important,yet they are not a panacea for all all ills,especially the "ills of modernity" with full of uncertainties.Though they can bring the users of explosives,poisons,electricity in fishing to justice,they fail to force every fisherman to adopt eco-friendly measures and care about fish welfare.Though they can express,prevent,regulate and modify fisheries and aquaculture behaviors and ensuing consequences,they fail to guide stakeholders to make moral choices.Though they can provide various kinds of policy guarantees for fish farmers deprived of their fishing zones,they fail to heal their psychological trauma after their being cut off from seas and rivers.Though they can set TAC targets based on scientific models and data,they fail to address the professional,emotional and life oppressions imposed on female figures in fisheries and aquaculture families.Just as technology is often determined by non-technical factors,fish-related laws and policies should not be expected to solve all problems.Laws and systems would eventually be reduced to mere formality if cultural and ethical elements cannot play their disciplinary roles.Conserving fisheries resources while maintaining fisheries justice have become an irresistable trend of our times.Modern governance should be both pragmatic and ideological,so as to promote the legitimacy of management measures from a strategic perspective.In fact,people’s moral and ethical values will penetrate into almost every link of public policy process.As sustainable and responsible fisheries development is relient on a clear set of rules and guidelines,it is critical to carry out value analysis in governance.The declining trend of fisheries resources at home and abroad,coupled with emerging modern social problems,makes retrospective examination a more pressing task: What are the good and evil of fisheries behavior? What are the principles and criteria for ethical judgment? What kind of governance is the legitimate governance in the ethical sense? How to solve ethical dilemmas in fisheries management? And how will China use its existing moral resources and wisdom to deal with the uncertain risks in the fisheries and aquaculture development?Based on this understanding,this paper,from the perspective of ethics,reflects on the root causes of the current ecological and social crisis in fisheries and aquaculture,in an attempt to construct the theoretical system of fisheries and aquaculture ethics,and elaborate on its origin,definition,main principles and categories.Abstract ethical considerations are then applied to the concrete analysis of governance issues,and a governance paradigm in line with the good values is then proposed,including the "meta-level" of governance,relevant modern governance theories,and the analysis and evaluation of governance practices.When pursuing multiple goals,modern governance is easy to fall into a dilemma where values conflict with one another.In view of the common problems in governance practices,this paper tries to put forward normative solutions.The ultimate purpose of ethical analysis is to promote modern fisheries and aquaculture governance in China.Therefore,this paper combines China’s local fish-related moral resources and the actual industry conditions,before exploring a modern governance path featuring Chinese characteristics.Emphasizing the ideological and ethical basis in this field provides a new perspective,new idea and new thinking for promoting the "harmony of man and nature" and coordinated development in the industry.Ethics refers a system of philosophical values concerned with morality.The rise of ecological ethics fundamentally touches upon the question: "Why we need to talk about fish-related ethics?" The currently intensive debate between "anthropocentrism" and "nature-centrism" actually transcends the context of "human-belonging ethics" in traditional discourse,thus enabling the possibility for a theoretical combination of "fisheries" and "ethics".The moral community has been expanded to include natural resources(i.e.fisheries resources)into moral considerations.However,an ecologically-centered approach would compromise human well-being.In fact,people and nature should be seen as a whole under the guidance of human-centered values.The value orientation of "benefiting both selfs and others" is therefore the most important and basic good pursued by fisheries and aquaculture ethics.Fish resources provides the basis of fisheries existence,which has five characteristics: uncertainty,fluctuation,competitiveness,integrity and diversity.In terms of value composition,it has efficacy values in use,ecology and selection,and non-efficacy intrinsic values in politics,society,philosophy,religion,ethics,culture and other aspects.It signals the progress of modern civilization to fully appreciate the value of fisheries resources.Those multiple values beneficial for human beings serve as a theoretical foundation for human conservation,whose ethics emphasizes how to use aquatic animal and plant resources in scientifical and humane manner.Whether fish can become a moral subject,a right subject or even a litigation subject has become one of the key contents in the scholarly discussion of environmental ethics,and the moral status and welfare of fish are increasingly considered as an important social issue.The ethical dimension of fisheries and aquaculture involves the interaction between "fish" and "ethics".Fish resources have satisfied basic human needs,safety needs,social needs,respect needs and self-actualization needs succesively.Therefore,while enjoying the right to exploit aquatic animals,human beings shall perform corresponding responsibilities and obligations.For the long-term well-being of both human beings and the ecosystem,a set of fisheries and aquaculture ethics that are generally recognized by the public to guide related behaviors and stand the test of practice shall be established.With the rationality and legitimacy of fisheries phenomenon as its research object,fisheries ethics is the sum total of norms and principles guiding relevant behaviors.Fish-related laws and ethics can join hands to upgrade value-based fisheries management strategies.The major task of fisheries and aquaculture ethics is to conduct prior guidance and post-judgment on the good and evil of relevant behaviors by virtue of universally recognized moral principles tested in practice.In the ethical system,Justice is the highest principle;Welfare,Freedom and Equity are the three basic principles;the ethical international instruments represented by The Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries,as well as guidelines tailored to the specific fishing conditions of countries/regions,constitute specific principles.According to the relational attributes of research objects and the different characteristics of problems involved,the ethics can be divided into four categories:ecological ethics,social ethics,industrial ethics and scientific and technological ethics.While these four categories have different ethical requirements,all of them shall conform to the abovementioned ethical principles.Integrating ethical principles and requirements into the process of modern fisheries and aquaculture strategic management process may produce a doing-well-by-doing-good effect.The ultimate goal of governance is to achieve "good governance".In order to overcome the governance obstacles caused by value conflicts,meta-governance theory is put forward and increasing studied.This theory explores the governance logic behind the phenomenons and seeks an optimal combination of hierachy,market and network governance models: The hierachy mode will be initiated once the participatory model leads to excessive complexity of regulation and enters into a state of endless consultation;the participatory model will be adopted when the hierarchy model cannot cover all fisheries issues or fails to be widely accepted by fisheries stakeholders;the government should assume the role of a meta-governor to guarantee the making of final decisions.Multiple modern management theories in line with ethical principles have emerged in the research of sustainable fisheries and aquaculture governance.Among them,management based on "ecological holism" and“value equilibrium" have become research hotspots.The former mainly focuses on holistic thinking such as ecosystem approach and precautionary principle,while the latter generally involves management strategy assessment,theory of justification,institutional governance and other conceptual tools.On the basis of this conceptual framework,the ethical analysis matrix and the Rapfish evaluation tool developed according to the practical ethics in new biotechnology serve to promote the examination of performance compliance of ethical principles,and provide "benign policies" for responsible fisheries and aquaculture practices.Modern fisheries and aquaculture governance often finds itself stuck in a dilemma of rights in the ethical sense.During the process,different stakeholders have to exercise a difficult choice between multiple courses of action,while selecting any one of which may incur a violation of some other ethical principles.The challenges brought by sustainable fisheries mainly arise in the decision-making process of pursuing "right time","right place" and "right people".How to balance the resource interests of modern and future generations is the core issue that deserves our attention.The spatial differences between land and water that fish lives,as well as related social and ecological issues are a typical sample of spatial justice.Conflicts between the long-term public interests and short-term individual interests can greatly affect the equitable distribution of resources.Therefore,more moral attention should be paid to the disadvantaged participants,such as fisherwomen and small-scale fisheries.The reasons for the above predicament include the Tragedy of the Commons or the Prisoner’s Dilemma caused by human battle for wild resources,the trap of radical environmentalism triggered by the debate about the respective moral statuses of human and fish,and the implementation obstacle resulted from a disconnection between theory and practice.The corresponding solutions contain both institutional and value-oriented attributes.An ethical perspective can permeate the entire process of governance,from setting goals,to making decisions,and then to implementation,monitoring,and evaluation.Governors and the governed can train their capacities of setting ethical goals and making ethical decisions.As a socialist country,China has a fundamental goal of improving people’s well-being in its comprehensive and deepened reform process.China’s fisheries and aquaculture development has made remarkable achievements,which has a lot to do with the support of abundant moral resources.Ecologically speaking,China’s history of fisheries and aquaculture management is a history of fish resource conservation,which reflects ecological wisdoms such as caring for fish welfare and learning from nature in practices since ancient times.Socially speaking,China’s traditional local social culture contains rich moral and etiquette norms,including ethics of mutual assistance and collectivism,and participatory ethics of fish-related organizations.China’s Three Fisheries and Aquaculture Issues,namely,the issues concerning the industry,villages and fishermen/aquaculture farmers impose great ethical challenges.The essence of the issues is the overdensity of fishing effort,the over-reliance of fishermen,and the over-thinning of fishing villages.In order to solve the problems concerned,China has carried out various reform measures.The China’s green fisheries and aquaculture governance system construction process can be divided into three stages: initial exploration,in-depth reform breakthrough and drive towards maturity.Despite of the difficulties brought by climate change,COVID-19 outbreak,fisheries resources decline,and increased global uncertainty risks,the Chinese government have stood up to the challenges,shifting value orietation from focusing livelihood to economical and sustainable development,forging an ethical sustainable fisheries and aquaculture development path with Chinese characteristics.Led by the government institutions as the meta-govenor,hierarchical,market and participatory governance models are organically combined together for optimal solution.In our unique development pattern,we have adopted values and moves that conform to nature,give priority to ecological wellbeing,take aquaculture as a dominate industry,stress stereoscopic and composite agricultural-fisheries system,center on technological development,pursue sound institutions,and ensure the inclusiveness of our basic safety net.With the continuous improvement of governance capacity and governance system,China’s fisheries and aquaculture development has not only reaped great fruits,but also accumulated plenty of valuable practical experiences for sustainable and responsible development in future.In the following years,all stakeholders in China should work hard to further promote the green transformation of fisheries and aquaculture on the ethical principles of welfare,freedom and justice. |
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