Ethics to Intersect Civic Participation and Formal Guidance
February 1, 2019 - Bohle, Martin; Nauen, Cornelia E.; Marone, Eduardo
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EmailJournal or Book Title: SUSTAINABILITY
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.
Type of Publication: Article