Rossi: Arctic Anadromy and Congested Regime Governance

Christopher Rossi (UiT, Arctic Univ. of Norway) has posted Arctic Anadromy and Congested Regime Governance (Environmental Law Reporter, Vol. 52, pp. 10193-10210, 2022). Here's the abstract:

The Tana River in the sub-Arctic region of Finnmark in northernmost Norway is the most diverse Atlantic salmon river in the world. It is one of Europe’s largest virgin river deltas. Its native salmon population has declined dramatically and existential concerns now result in a fishing ban that has affected indigenous Sámi traditional life and devastated the local economy. Now, concern is mounting over an additional and unexpected threat—the secondary infestation of pink salmon, transplanted by Soviets from Pacific waters into the Kola Peninsula decades ago. Salmonids are anadromous species. They spawn in fresh water, migrate to the open sea, and then return to begin and end their life-cycle. Secondary spread of the invasive Pacific salmon into the Tana and adjacent Norwegian rivers creates a potential threat to the genetic diversity of the river and surrounding plant and animal life. The treat of anadromy potentially challenges the regime structures of international fisheries, complicating solutions and understandings of the problem and the generative international relations grammar that can contribute to a coordinated solution. The problem of anadromy is literally and metaphorically reviewed in the context of the Tana River, with the suggestion that international regime theory must adjust to the problem of biological elision with a broadened ecosystem approach to the Arctic that accounts for this and other consequences of transplanted species into waters where they never were before.