Rights and representation support justice across aquatic food systems

The paper addresses systemic inequities in global food systems, focusing on aquatic foods. Despite vast wealth accumulation and growing global production, trade and consumption, one in four people remain food insecure and injustices persist, exacerbated by crises such as COVID-19. Drawing on social justice theory, the authors frame injustices across three interdependent dimensions: distributional (economic structures limiting resources), recognitional (social and cultural structures undervaluing identities, e.g., gender), and representational (political structures limiting voice and accountability). They hypothesize that institutionalized barriers to participation across these dimensions explain unequal distributions of aquatic food benefits. The study aims to quantify inequalities in aquatic food benefits (production, trade, consumption), assess recognition of participation barriers in national policies, link barriers to benefit distributions using Bayesian models, and identify policy attributes associated with more just outcomes across 194 countries (2006–2016).

The study is grounded in social and environmental justice scholarship (e.g., Fraser; Schlosberg), which conceptualizes justice as parity of participation and emphasizes distributional, recognitional, and representational dimensions. Prior work documents rising corporate concentration and power in global food systems, persistent food insecurity, and the role of aquatic foods in nutrition, livelihoods, and trade. The authors note debates on how globalization and trade can exacerbate or alleviate inequalities, the importance of gender equality for food security, and the functions of small-scale fisheries in poverty alleviation and nutrition. This literature motivates examining how economic (wealth, education), social (gender, cultural diversity, age structure), and political (voice and accountability) barriers relate to observed inequalities in aquatic food systems, and how policy content engages with these barriers.

The authors employ a mixed-methods, four-step approach for 194 countries (primarily 2006–2016): 1) Quantify inequality in aquatic food benefits using the Gini coefficient. Benefits analyzed: production (t worker−1 yr−1), exports (US$ capita−1 yr−1), and consumption (aquatic protein supply, g capita−1 d−1). Lorenz curves and unweighted Gini coefficients (R package reldist) assess between-country inequality. 2) Assess policy recognition of barriers via expert-informed summative content analysis. Eight guided expert interviews identified terms reflecting economic (wealth, safety nets, market access/trade), social (gender, age, health/nutrition-sensitive policies), and political (human rights, access rights, participation/representation) barriers. A corpus of 344 national production- and consumption-related legal/policy documents from 173 countries (1991–2020) was compiled; after filtering, 306 documents were analysed across five languages (~98% country coverage). Using NVivo 2020, keyword references per page were computed, aggregated to thematic scores, and mapped by UN subregions. 3) Link barriers to benefit distributions using Bayesian hierarchical models. Seven barrier indicators: economic (wealth, education), social (gender inequality, linguistic diversity, cultural hegemony, age dependency), and political (voice and accountability). Eight benefit outcomes: production per worker, employment (total; women in direct sector), nutrient density, export revenues, affordability (relative caloric price of fish), consumption per capita, and reliance on aquatic foods. Models include up to four control variables tailored to outcomes (e.g., EEZ area, primary productivity, inland water inundation, climatic zone, capture and aquaculture production, unit export/import values, affordability). DAGs were developed to identify and remove colliders and manage confounding; variables were transformed and standardized. Three-level hierarchy (global, 22 refined regions, nations); t-distributed likelihood; weakly informative priors; missing covariates imputed via LKJ Cholesky priors. Parameters estimated via NUTS (PyMC3 v3.10.0; two chains, 5,000 samples), with diagnostics (LOO-PIT uniformity; R̂≈1) supporting fit. 4) Identify policy attributes associated with more just outcomes using a positive deviance and interpretative content analysis. For five policy-sensitive outcomes (production, employment, affordability, consumption, reliance), 12 outlier countries (six positive, six negative) were selected based on largest national intercept deviations from regional means. Five positive outliers (Bangladesh, Gambia, Liberia, Peru, Philippines) and three negative (Ethiopia, Finland, Sudan) were assessed qualitatively for depth and sophistication of engagement with justice dimensions and emergent themes. Table 1 synthesizes common policy failings versus best practices.

- Inequality in aquatic food benefits is high. Gini coefficients: production per worker 0.76; export revenues per capita 0.90 (more unequal than global income Gini ~0.65); consumption (aquatic protein supply) 0.46. A few high-income countries (e.g., Iceland 253 t worker−1 yr−1; Norway 171 t worker−1 yr−1) dominate production per worker; nations like Iceland, Norway, Seychelles top per capita export revenue, while China, Norway, Peru together account for 23% of global export volume. Consumption is highest in several island nations (e.g., Maldives 47 g capita−1 d−1; Iceland 27; Kiribati 24) but 60% of countries consume below the global average of 5.5 g capita−1 d−1. - Policy recognition of barriers is uneven. Across 306 documents from 173 countries, economic barriers (wealth, trade) are most frequently referenced, especially in southern Africa; political barriers (voice, accountability) are least referenced globally. Social barriers (gender, age) receive far fewer mentions in production-related policies (<0.1 refs/page on average) than in consumption policies (~1.2 refs/page). 20% and 30% of countries’ production policies made no references to age or gender, respectively, versus very few omissions in consumption policies, indicating persistent gender-blindness in production policies and weak cross-sector coordination. - Economic barriers associate with distributional injustices limiting wealth-based benefits. Higher wealth and education correlate with greater production per worker and higher consumption per capita. Where education is lower (higher economic barriers), diets and jobs are more dependent on aquatic foods and nutrient density is higher, reflecting welfare-based dependencies that can contribute to poverty traps. - Political barriers co-occur with economic barriers to reinforce a wealth–welfare divide. Greater voice and accountability correlate with higher production, exports, and consumption; conversely, where political voice/accountability is weak, more jobs (including for women) and greater affordability are observed, underscoring trade-offs between wealth generation and welfare functions. - Social barriers primarily limit welfare-sustaining benefits. Greater gender equality is associated with more affordable aquatic foods. Higher linguistic (cultural) diversity is associated with more employment but lower exports, suggesting diverse production systems support larger workforces while more homogeneous systems may specialize for export. - Policy attributes linked to more just outcomes include: explicit centering of justice and human rights; broadening responsibility for change beyond disadvantaged groups; recognition of structural drivers and intersectionality; clear inclusive decision-making processes and downward accountability; and redistributive measures (e.g., preferential credit, access rights, protected zones for small-scale fisheries) that explicitly address structural causes of injustice. Countries with better-than-expected outcomes (e.g., Bangladesh, Gambia, Liberia, Peru, Philippines) exemplified such attributes, while those with worse-than-expected outcomes often used narrow or blaming language that risks reinforcing stereotypes. - Five policy recommendations: (1) center justice and human rights, challenge harmful norms; (2) provide clear inclusive decision-making processes and downward accountability; (3) identify structural drivers to design just redistributive policies; (4) strengthen cross-sector engagement between production and consumption to avoid reinforcing social norms; (5) recognize and coordinate across tensions between wealth-generating and welfare-sustaining benefits, leveraging pan-national efforts (e.g., Committee on World Food Security).

The findings substantiate the hypothesis that institutionalized barriers to participation drive unequal distributions of aquatic food benefits. Economic and political barriers reduce wealth-based outcomes (production, exports, consumption), while social barriers, notably gender inequality, erode welfare-sustaining outcomes such as affordability. The Bayesian analyses clarify how wealth, education, and voice/accountability shape benefit distributions even after accounting for biophysical and geographic endowments. Policy content analysis reveals gaps: production-oriented policies remain gender-blind, and political barriers are often ignored, fragmenting efforts across sectors. By identifying positive deviance cases, the study links specific policy attributes—rights-based framing, inclusive and accountable governance, and explicit recognition of structural drivers—to more equitable outcomes. These insights highlight the need for integrated, justice-centered policy reforms that balance export-led growth with domestic welfare functions, protect affordability and jobs, and ensure marginalized groups have voice and representation in decision-making. The recommendations provide an actionable pathway to align aquatic food systems with principles of social justice and to improve nutrition and livelihoods for vulnerable populations.

This study advances understanding of justice in aquatic food systems by quantifying stark inequalities in benefits, empirically linking economic, social, and political barriers to these inequalities, and identifying policy attributes associated with more just outcomes. It demonstrates that centering human rights, ensuring inclusive and accountable governance, explicitly addressing structural drivers, and fostering cross-sector coordination are associated with improved welfare- and wealth-related outcomes. Moving forward, governments and partners should invest in governance reforms that integrate justice across production and consumption policies, safeguard welfare functions (jobs, affordability, nutrition) while managing trade-driven growth, and coordinate across national and international scales. Future research can extend this work by tracking policy implementation versus content, integrating subnational and group-level analyses of participation and benefits, and evaluating causal impacts of specific policy instruments on justice outcomes over time.

- Policy documents reflect de jure intentions and enabling conditions, not necessarily de facto implementation; time lags and practice–policy gaps may exist. - The policy corpus, while broad and representative, is not exhaustive of all relevant national policies. - Cultural identity terms (e.g., ethnicity, caste, religion) were not included in the quantitative policy keyword analysis due to geographic specificity and representativeness constraints. - The Bayesian models control for key biophysical and geographic factors but focus on contemporary patterns and do not disentangle historical, religious, or cultural evolutions shaping current systems. - DAGs were used to manage confounding, but the study does not claim formal causal inference; associations should not be overinterpreted as causal effects. - Some variables required imputation; although model diagnostics were satisfactory, imputation introduces uncertainty. - Consumption data and affordability measures may mask within-country and intra-household disparities, including gendered access and subnational variation.