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environmental and economic areas. These case studies offer an opportunity to think through

the theme of continuity and transformation along with challenges and paradoxes of sustaining

more than fish.

Sustaining More Than Fish

In broader sustainability debates, cultural and social matters have occupied a discursive space

since the 1990s. Culture was first placed onto a global sustainability agenda at the 2002

World Summit of Sustainable Development (Johannesburg) through the four-pillar model of

sustainability. Culture remained a key term in the lead up to the post-2015 UN development

agenda (see DESA Development Policy and Analysis Division) and has also figured in wider

environmental movements of the 21st Century. However, two main obstacles continue to

exist. The first is the lack of a nuanced definition of culture in relation to ecological

problems. The second is a default to the more familiar environmental discourse. To

understand this default position it helps to know the history of two interrelated sustainability

discourses. Farrell and Hart (1998) articulate this as two divergent definitions of

sustainability. The first, based on the critical limits of earth’s resources and carrying capacity

(Farrell & Hart 1998, p. 6) is the environmentally focused sustainability discourse that

emerged in the 1980s. The second definition is based on an integrated discourse, which

balances social, economic and ecological goals (Farrell & Hart 1998, p. 6) and is often

expressed through the three (social, economic and environmental) and later the four

(including cultural) pillar models of sustainability.

The latter discourse (integrated), including its relationship with the former

(environmental limits) discourse, is intriguing. As Ross Gibson suggests, ‘the genius of the

sustainability concept is its insistence on interconnections and interdependencies’ (2006, p.

266). Conversely, as others have noted, the core dilemma of the sustainability project is this

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