Special issue on Reflexive Marine Governance is out

A new special issue is out on Reflexive Marine Governance in the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning! Guest-editors Judith van Leeuwen and Jan van Tatenhove from ENP, together with Michelle Voyer (ANCORS University of Wollongong) and Marleen Schutter (Worldfish) have developed this special issue to advance the conceptual and empirical understanding of transformations in marine governance arrangements to address the tripe blue crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, and the role of reflexivity in marine governance transformations. It considers the role of learning and emotions in reflexivity processes within (networked) governance arrangements in fisheries, plastic pollution legislation, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as well as transdisciplinary marine social scientific research itself.

The special issue knows six contributions. It start with the editorial that explains the background, aims and lessons learned from the special issue. A theoretical contribution then comes from the four editors, unravelling what reflexivity is, what social learning has to do with it and how reflexivity relates to marine governance transformations. In another contribution, Benedict McAteer and Wesley Flannery from Queen’s University Belfast, analyse the way in which actors’ receptivity to change and network learning is crucial for reflexivity in networked fisheries governance in Northen Ireland. Violet Ross and Judith van Leeuwen from ENP explore in their contribution how the Single-Use Plastic Directive is (not) able to foster reflexivity at the level of individual companies. Guest editor Michelle Voyer has collaborated with a wide range of marine social science scholars in their contribution to reflect on the role of reflexive approaches to research, especially those that cut across knowledge and cultural boundaries, to transform ocean governance research. Finally, the contribution by Soli Levi and Kimberley Peters, from the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldeburg, draw on feminist theories to discuss the role of emotions in reflexivity in ocean governance, in particular the shaping of the United Nations Law of the Sea.

Find the full special issue here: Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning: Vol 27, No 1