Isao Sakaguchi

Humanity has never benefited more from the ocean as a source of food, livelihoods, and well-being, yet on a global scale this has been accompanied by trajectories of degradation and persistent inequity. Awareness of this has spurred policymakers to develop an expanding network of ocean governance instruments, catalyzed civil society pressure on the public and private sector, and motivated engagement by the general public as consumers and constituents. Among local communities, diverse examples of stewardship have rested on the foundation of care, knowledge and agency. But does an analog for stewardship exist in the context of globally active multinational corporations? Here, we consider the seafood industry and its efforts to navigate this new reality through private governance. We examine paradigmatic events in the history of the sustainable seafood movement, from seafood boycotts in the 1970s through to the emergence of certification measures, benchmarks, and diverse voluntary environmental programs. We note four dimensions of stewardship in which efforts by actors within the seafood industry have aligned with theoretical concepts of stewardship, which we describe as (1) moving beyond compliance, (2) taking a systems perspective, (3) living with uncertainty, and (4) understanding humans as embedded elements of the biosphere. In conclusion, we identify emerging stewardship challenges for the seafood industry and suggest the urgent need to embrace a broader notion of ocean stewardship that extends beyond seafood.

<title>Abstract</title> Asia-Pacific lacks an environmental leader. Japan, a forerunner of environmental regulation in the 1970s, started to engage in active environmental diplomacy in the post-Cold War era by hosting conferences of parties to multilateral environmental agreements such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as well as providing a massive amount of environmental aid. Then, in the 2000s, Japan’s initiatives became substantially weakened and have gained a negative international reputation as the country took a considerably passive position to the Paris Agreement, filed many reservations to the CITES listing decisions, and withdrew from the International Whaling Commission. This article explores, through six brief case studies, the factors and structures that systemically impede Japan’s environmental leadership and norm internalization. It highlights the constraining factors behind Japan’s devolution including its closed bureaucratic system and the lack of positive engagement of Japanese scientists. Finally, it addresses the future prospects of environmental cooperation in the Asia-Pacific.

IWC regime was originally established as an institution to manage whaling in a sustainable manner. However, due to the intensive anti-whaling campaign conducted by activist NGOs such as Greenpeace and the Friends of Earth, a moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted in 1982. Since then, it has changed to be an institution to prohibit whaling for a humanitarian reason, and six whaling countries, fearing of the U. S. sanction, with-drew from commercial whaling tamely. To the contrary, Japan, Norway and Iceland became determined to continue whaling. However, when the moratorium was adopted, they had showed rather passive reaction to the prohibition norm and had not been determined to sustain whaling. Nevertheless, the three countries began to show a strong resentment to the prohibition norm, and went on to sustain whaling firmly.<br>What caused such a difference in attitude among the whaling countries? The answer exists in the strategies that the activist NGOs adopted. To stop whaling, they took full advantage of physical pressure against the three countries where whaling has either cultural or economic importance without making substantial campaign efforts to persuade their citizens. According to the theory of psychological reactance, pressure as an imposition or proscription of a specific behavior, causes resistance to persuasion, provided the freedom of the behavior is regarded as important to a certain extent. However, pressure does not always cause a reactive response. This depends on the balance between pressure and persuasion. As a persuasive argument has power to effect consent, a psychological backlash will not happen when the power to effect consent exceeds the reactance force. However, the activist NGOs, not having run a campaign zealously in the three countries, consolidated a situation that the latter exceeds the former significantly. The result is a strong backlash by the three whaling countries.<br>Then, why could the anti-whaling NGOs not conduct an active campaign in the three countries? It was because they were faced with financial constraints. To change the public opinion in the three countries, it seemingly requires more resource investment. Activist NGOs, if failed in costly campaign activity, will suffer from financial problem and may be forced to restructure its business toward downsizing. Therefore they tend to decide their campaign strategies based on the cost-benefit calculation. However, if they concentrate their campaign effort on countries where the issue does not have much importance while depending fully on physical pressure against those that appear to be more resisting to their normative project, activist NGOs are doomed to function as an agent of a global fragmentation of norm and faced with a serious democratic deficit. Thus Activist NGOs are faced with a difficult dilemma whether, in constructing campaign strategies, to choose predominantly easy countries for the sake of sustaining and expanding organization, or to get bravely involved in more resisting countries however risky such a choice is.