Are there plenty of fish in the sea? : a study on how policy has influenced Norwegian fish exports and EU’s domestic aquaculture between 1995-2015.

Sammanfattning: The marine resources have under a long time been exposed to mismanagement and lack of joint sustainability practices, this has resulted in overfishing and depletion of fish stocks. This paper aims to combine European sustainability policy with trade analysis concerning Norwegian fish exports to the EU. The underlying hypothesis is that policy governing sustainable development has led to a strengthening of European aquaculture. The policy chosen for the study is the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and its reforms in 2003 and 2013, where it aims for economic, environmental and ecological sustainability. This paper implements a Gravity Model to combine the CFP together with common trade variables such as bilateral agreements, distance, CPI, GDP and trade openness. The analysis is made for both Norwegian fish and salmon exports to a sample of 12 EU countries between 1995-2015. The EU’s trade relation with Norway is of interest since they are one of the major fish exporters globally and the most important fish supplier for the European market. The results suggest that the CFP could have affected the sustainable development of the EU aquaculture, and especially in terms of salmon. The trade agreement variable for EEA is also suggested to have a positive influence on the Norwegian fish exports during this time period. The results also indicate that an increase of aquaculture in the EU would not be at the expense of Norwegian fish trade. This paper provides an example of how a simple Gravity Model could be used in order to combine sustainability policy and trade analysis.