Ethics to Intersect Civic Participation and Formal Guidance

Martin Bohle, Cornelia E. Nauen and Eduardo Marone
Additional contact information
Martin Bohle: DG Research and Innovation, European Commission, 1149 Brussels, Belgium
Cornelia E. Nauen: Mundus maris-Sciences and Arts for Sustainability asbl, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Eduardo Marone: FUNPAR/IOI, CEM-UFPR Curitiba, Paraná CEP 80010-200, Brazil

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Sound governance arrangement in socio-ecological systems (human niche) combines different means of sense-making. The sustainability of human niche-building depends on the governability of the social-ecological systems (SES) forming the niche. Experiences from small-scale marine fisheries and seabed mining illustrate how ethical frameworks, civic participation and formalised guidance combine in the context of a “blue economy”. Three lines of inquiries contextualise these experiences driving research questions, such as “what is the function of ethics for governability?” First, complex-adaptive SES are featured to emphasise the sense-making feedback loop in SES. Actors are part of this feedback loop and can use different means of sense-making to guide their actions. Second, the “Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries” and geoethical thinking are featured to highlight the relevance of actor-centric concepts. Third, Kohlberg’s model of “stages of moral adequacy” and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) are used to show how to strengthen actor-centric virtue-ethics. Combining these lines of inquiry leads to the conclusion that ethical frameworks, civic participation and formalised guidance, when put in a mutual context, support governability and multi-actor/level policy-making. Further research could explore how creativity can strengthen civic participation, a feature only sketched here.

Keywords: sustainable governance; social-ecological systems; ethical frameworks; civic participation; small-scale fisheries; moral adequacy; Law of the Sea; human niche-building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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