The environmental geopolitics of allocation: State power and institutional stability in Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna management

Geopolitical contests over oceanic space and resources commonly manifest in inter-state resource management bodies. That ocean spaces and resources defy a territorial conception of the nation-state means that the environmental geopolitics that emerge are shaped by the nature of oceans and oceans resources. In this context, allocation is among the most pressing and contentious tasks that inter-state bodies managing transboundary resources face as they carve up and distribute access to valuable, shared resources. This paper examines the allocation of highly migratory, and highly valuable, Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna to contribute to understanding of state power and institutional stability in transboundary resource management. Drawing on observation of an allocation negotiation and historical allocation patterns, the analysis animates and extends critical property scholarship to develop an environmental geopolitics of allocation. Findings reveal that states form, contest and maintain power by making claims based not only on rights, but also on duties that they perform to the benefit of other states in collective management. Powerful states also make concessions in the allocation process, giving up some historical rights in order to stabilize the multilateral body that enables their dominance in the fishery. Given new and renewed interest in managing shared species, spaces and resources in the oceans and beyond, viewing allocation through the lens of property reveals state power as expressed through a combination of rights and duties between states bound together in management by the materiality of transboundary and mobile natures.