Lost in Translation? Multiple Discursive Strategies and the Interpretation of Sustainability in the Norwegian Salmon Farming Industry

Abstract

The term 'sustainability' is vague and open to interpretation. In this paper we analyze how firms use the term in an effort to make the concept their own, and how it becomes a premise for further decisions, by applying a bottom-up approach focusing on the interpretation of 'sustainability' in the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. The study is based on a strategic selection of informants from the industry and the study design rests on: 1) identification of the main drivers of sustainability, and 2) the application of five different discursive strategies to analyze how the firms maneuver to legitimize 'sustainability' in their conduct. We employ the Critical Discourse Analysis framework, which emphasizes how discourses provide different concepts of meaning. The sustainability concept is assessed based on how sustainability is brought into action by social actors in a legitimate way, and how this action results in sustainable practices. The empirical case of the study is the verbal justification of sustainability practices among representatives of the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. We aim to find out how these representatives translate the rather vague directives of the sustainability concept into legitimate choices that resonate with the firms' contextual environment, hence, how the salmon farmers perceive, explore, interpret, explain, enact, and defend the diverse landscape of sustainability when implementing professional decisions. We found a trend of passive adaptation to external requirements, such as public regulations and regulative requirements from certification bodies. At the same time, there are progressive forces that attempt to improve the sustainability of the farming practices by involvement in research and innovation projects or cooperation with other firms, e.g. the contribution from offshore engineers in developing high seas farms. The strategies outlined and discussed cannot be seen as a typology to categorize the firms. More than one discursive strategy may be involved in one firm's choice, and the strategies may work on different levels.

Law and Sustainable Transitions: An Analysis of Aquaculture Regulation

“…If the sustainability standard desired by the aquaculture industry in Norway is less strict compared with that the regulator desires, the potential for voluntary adjustments by the industry is limited, which supports the use of regulation. Relevant to our case, a study by Aarset et al found a trend of passive adaptation to external requirements, in the sustainability practices among some representatives of the Norwegian salmon-farming industry (Aarset et al, 2020), further supporting the need to use regulation as a tool. On this basis, meeting sustainability ambitions by 2030 seems unlikely in a business-and-regulation-as-usual scenario.…”

Multi-level agency and transformative capacity for environmental risk reduction in the Norwegian salmon farming industry

“…of which 24 from all over Norway were approved (Directorate of Fisheries, n.d.b). The fact that a total of 892 licenses "equals 85% of the total number of ordinary licenses" (Hersoug et al, 2021, p. 7) demonstrates the program's popularity and degree to which competition was stimulated among industry actors (Hersoug et al, 2019;Vormedal et al, 2019;Aarset et al, 2020;Føre et al, 2022;Osmundsen et al, 2022). All awarded licenses included measures against sea lice (Føre et al, 2022).…”

Making a Web-Portal With Aquaculture Sustainability Indicators for the General Public

“…Since sustainability was introduced as a term at the global high level by WCED (1997), it has become a widely used objective guiding the actions of both governments, industries, and consumers (Portney, 2015;UN, 2015), although also being contested and problematized (Aarset et al, 2020). Most common frameworks of sustainability identify three sustainability dimensions: economic, environmental, and social (e.g., Bracco et al, 2019;Eustachio et al, 2019).…”

“…Some indicators are used directly in the authorities' management of aquaculture, for example in in Norway (Osmundsen et al, 2020b, NFD, 2015, but there is also clear criticism of authorities in some countries being too slow to incorporate indicators in management (Milewski and Smith, 2019). The relative fuzziness of the sustainability term has also led to what some authors call a power struggle between authorities and industry actors over how it should be interpreted and have operational consequences (Aarset et al, 2020).…”