The hard choices of sustainability

Sustainable fisheries are the main objective of Norwegian fisheries management. Despite powerful management tools, sustainability in the fisheries sector is not an easy task. There is no formal definition of the concept, and operationalization is vague. In recent years, private actors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have increased their impact on defining sustainability in the fisheries, which has reduced the power of the traditional fisheries management to determine its content. The lack of a clear strategy for fisheries management to increase sustainability makes it timely to address three research questions: (i) what is meant by “sustainable fisheries”, (ii) to what extent has the institutionalization of the Norwegian fisheries management channeled the sustainability concept towards specific trajectories, and (iii) what are the options and hard choices available to increase sustainability in the Norwegian fisheries in the future? These questions are investigated in this article.