A Political Ecology of Aquaculture Certification: Towards a 'modernization of Ecology'

The article examines environmental certification regimes in the global aquaculture as an example of ecological modernization. While the fundamental tenet of ecological modernization is to shape capitalism by ecological principles, the study shows instead that through environmental certification regimes, ecology or nature itself is largely shaped, transformed and restructured to fit into, and thus serve, neoliberal governance and accumulation in a normalized manner. Certification regimes offer some avenues for a sustainable aquaculture; however, the internal dynamics of neoliberal capitalism remains largely unchanged. Since economic logic still reigns over ecological and social logics, the article argues that the example of the certification regimes should therefore be characterized not by ‘ecological modernization’ but by ‘modernization of ecology’. It is because through certification regimes, capitalism is not modernized in ecological lines, but ecology itself is modernized in the line of neoliberal capitalism.