Are international conflicts over fishery resources a growing security concern? High-profile incidences of conflict, diminishing fishery resources and climate impacts on marine systems have made the international community increasingly wary of fisheries conflict. However, we lack knowledge on conflict incidences over time, as well as the contexts in which the conflicts occur, to assess if fisheries conflict is a growing security threat. To fill that gap, this thesis aims to provide a more detailed understanding of the temporal and regional patterns of international fisheries conflict – more specifically its frequency, nature, regional occurrence over time, and its drivers. Gaining insight into these patterns can aid the development of conflict management strategies and implementation of policies to ensure future ocean security.

In Paper I, I present a review of the literature on fisheries conflict, aimed at assessing to what degree existing studies have incorporated ideas from complexity and social-ecological systems theory. Making use of an initial scan of 803 relevant papers, and the subsequent intensive review of 31 fisheries conflict studies, I identify areas within the literature that would benefit from further development. First, precise definitions of fisheries conflict are lacking. Second, there is a narrowness in the methods used to assess the drivers of fisheries conflict, as the literature is largely populated by single cases of conflict assessed in a qualitative manner. Third, nonlinear and dynamic feedbacks, multiple causes, effects and intervening variables are often not explicitly recognized. Fourth, there is room for a more widespread extension of higher order concepts and associated terminology to describe complex system interactions, such as ‘feedbacks’ or ‘adaptive capacity’.

In Paper II, I present findings on the characteristics of international fisheries conflict over time drawing on a global and longitudinal database I developed that logs international fisheries conflict between 1974 and 2016. The analysis shows that the frequency of fisheries conflict increased over this time period, with substantial variation in both the type of conflict and the countries involved. Before 2000, fisheries conflict involved mostly North American and European countries fighting over specific species. Since then, conflict has primarily involved Asian countries clashing over multiple species linked to illegal fishing practices. I also consider potential response strategies for the different conflict types uncovered.

In Paper III, I use a multi-model approach to test for the supply-induced scarcity hypothesis (diminishing supplies of resources increases conflict) and the demand-induced scarcity hypothesis (rising demand for resources increases conflict) on international fishery conflict data. Three alternative political and economic explanatory pathways are also tested. Overall, I find that no single indicator is able to fully explain international conflict over fishery resources. For the period 1975 to 1996, I find a relationship between conflict over fishery resources and higher levels of GDP per capita. For the period 1997 to 2016, findings support the demand-induced scarcity hypothesis, with analyses also indicating that an increase in supply of fishery resources is linked to an increase in conflict occurrence.

Lastly, in Paper IV, I present four future fisheries conflict scenarios. The scenarios integrate longitudinal evidence on international fisheries conflict and expert data on fishery conflict trends and drivers. The scenarios take place in the years 2030 to 2060 in the North-East Atlantic (“Scramble for the Atlantic”), the East China Sea (“The Remodeled Empire”), the coast of West Africa (“Oceanic Decolonization”), and the Arctic (“Polar Renaissance”). The aim is to illuminate how different decisions made today can lead to dramatically diverging future paths, and to inspire policy makers to work with exploratory scenario processes to build anticipatory capacity to support future ocean security.