SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS

Norway is a country with many small villages with 150–2 000 inhabitants. In the north and west of Norway, fisheries is often the main activity of the villages and a common social structure is the father working as a fishers, the mother working in the factory and the children taught to participate in these activities on weekends and school vacations – although this is changing.

Due to smaller quotas for fish and technological improvements, there are fewer villages of these size and less recruits to most positions within fisheries. Fisheries have a reputation of being unpredictable and a low status occupation. A major challenge has been to adapt capacity to the sustainable management of crucial fish resources upon which many communities rely.

New technological breakthroughs related to CBA have opened new possibilities to add value to a sustainable cod fishery that can secure vulnerable jobs and improve profitability in an industry located in rural areas. In order to develop these possibilities several challenges have to be met. The extra costs related to this way of organising the value system have to be reduced and compared to the traditional harvesting model. Second, the consumers have to be willing to pay a higher price for the products produced by the capture-based industry.
Data indicates that the traditional wild harvesting cod outperforms cod CBA. However, statistics indicate that the two fisheries do not compete with each other – rather they compliment each other. As the actors in the two fisheries are the same, CBA has become a new option for people earning their livelihood from traditional cod harvesting. Exploiting the competitive advantages of CBA will improve profitability and secure vulnerable workplaces in this rural-based industry.