A Norwegian seaweed utopia? Governmental narratives of coastal communities, upscaling, and the industrial conquering of ocean spaces

Abstract

AbstractAlgae-based biomass occupies a prominent role in policy narratives for a more sustainable future situated between Blue Growth Strategies and European (Blue) bioeconomy development. Especially in Norway, the developing seaweed farming sector is portrayed as a novel bioresource sector entailing an array of benefits to remediate global as local environmental and socio-economic challenges. Accredited with massive growth potentials and framed by large-scale industrialist rhetoric with a future in conquering ocean spaces through technological fixes, the sector’s development faces multiple challenges. Additionally, the assumptive growth-centred policy narratives employed leave little room for small-scale, locally embedded alternatives called upon by many experts on sustainable and socially just blue resource governance. The paper addresses this issue by conceptualizing Norwegian seaweed farming as an assembling process with a focus on (policy) narratives as a means for governmental spatial interventions. Based on qualitative data with a focus on active Norwegian seaweed farmers’ perspectives for the sector’s current practices and future developments, the paper assesses the relations and contradictions between the optimistic key policy narratives, current sector developments, and the entrepreneur positionalities that shape the reproduction processes of this Norwegian seaweed assemblage. The paper shows that strong beliefs in extensive growth and technological solutions to tackle the fluid materialities of seaweed production are widespread among entrepreneurs. Paired with policy strategies and a development environment rooted in similar narratives, this creates a current development approach that reduces challenges to technological and administrative domains and neglects the (local) socio-economic and sustainability potential vested in alternative, small-scale approaches.