Finnish fish farming operates in a controversial business
environment. Earlier environmental harms still affect the industries
reputation, and the current environmental regulation makes it hard to initiate
or scale up production. Yet consumers, following environmentally sound dietary
recommendations, would like to have more domestic fish on their plate. The
current supply of domestic farmed fish does not meet the demand for it.
Recent conceptual innovations may help to reconcile this gap
between domestic supply and demand. The circular economy and the bioeconomy are
popular concepts that may have significant potential in this regard. In a
circular economy, the production of goods, services and value becomes a
continuum where waste, side-streams and emerging positive and negative
potential (risks) are transformed back into production, i.e. the life-cycles of
several materials and processes are embedded. The circular economy utilises its
own waste products and feeds itself.
In Finland, several recent institutional innovations are
encouraging fish farming towards a circular economy model. With the use of
Baltic Sea Feed, the environmental load of fish farming is compensated by
producing feed from lower value fish harvested from the Baltic. Also, with the
Spatial Location Plan, fish farming facilities are located in areas where the
environmental condition of the water is most suitable and the
technical-economic preconditions are met. These innovations mean that the level
of production can increase while the environmental load decreases. The
environment, fishers, fish farmers and the domestic fish market benefit.
The bioeconomy is a parallel concept to the circular
economy. Renewable natural resources are used to produce food, energy, and
other products and services. The bioeconomy decouples the dependence of the
economy from fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. This helps to
prevent the decrease of biological diversity and promotes economic growth in
sync with the principles of sustainable development. In the bioeconomy, natural
resources are not wasted either, they are used responsibly and are effectively
recycled.
However, the circular economy and the bioeconomy do have
their differences. The circular economy uses engineering science to measure
flows of materials and energy, and seeks to identify technological, social and
institutional bottlenecks, as well as barriers and path-dependencies that must
be overcome. The bioeconomy on the other hand is a wider concept. If one wants
to characterise the bioeconomy with a flow-metaphor, it is a river that flows
upstream. The growth of the bioeconomy builds on dissipative structures, i.e.
actual and potential arrangements that sustain and develop themselves according
to the invested energy and work. The bioeconomy is always an open system, far
from equilibrium, which is not necessarily true of the circular economy.
In the bioeconomy, new arrangements are always co-created
between different actors. For example, pre-negotiations between a (start-up)
fish farmer and environmental permit administrator about the requirements of
environmental assessment is a step towards the co-created bioeconomy.
Entrepreneurial activities and the permit administration both benefit from such
reflexive practices in business governance. Recently developed local
co-operation groups are another example where good governance, fish farming
activities and the environmental quality control may meet. It is hoped that
these groups can co-create long-term solutions to mitigate the effects of
aquaculture on the Great Cormorant populations in coastal areas in Finland.
Quite obviously, market-based solutions do not necessarily
support the bioeconomy. For example, in the fisheries sector, vessel-specific
fishing rights provide an opportunity for negotiation between fishing
enterprises, but the can also affect small-scale artisanal fishing and
harmfully impact fishing culture and social cohesion. However, the use of
Baltic Sea Feed in fish farming may have positive synergies and benefit coastal
cultures. Perhaps it is best to consider the bioeconomy as a multidimensional
material and immaterial growth process, aiming to produce plural economies,
protect nature and ensure benefits and costs are equitably shared.
Long-term bioeconomic solutions require upstream, bottom-up
activism, that produces innovative structural and functional architectures for
individual, social and collective action. As we have witnessed in Finland, the
recent developments in fish farming are built on a combination of business,
environmental, social and policy entrepreneurial creativity. The government is
not an outsider to these developments. It has taken an active role in
supporting the testing of novel arrangements in order to find those that work
best. The blue bioeconomy and its governance are now poised to co-evolve towards
a sustainable future.