https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149690 Sun, 08 Nov 2026 19:05:49 GMT 2026-11-08T19:05:49Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149751 Title: Paying due regard : balancing fisheries conservation and international development Abstract: This dissertation examines the historical trajectory of the relationship between fisheries and international development in the fisheries-related resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly from 1992 to 2025. It starts from the observation that international fisheries governance repeatedly recognises the special requirements of developing States, while the meaning of those requirements remains dispersed across treaty law, soft law, UNGA resolutions, FAO instruments, WTO rules and RFMO practice. The dissertation applies the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) to reconstruct how development is made meaningful, which actors are classified as requiring differentiated treatment, and which solutions become institutionally legitimate. The UNGA fisheries resolutions form the longitudinal coded corpus. Annex 3 situates Development within the wider fisheries discourse, while Annex 4 reconstructs the internal hierarchy of development-related code groups. Annexes 6 and 7 connect this hierarchy to related legal instruments and selected RFMO provisions, including WCPFC, IOTC and ICCAT materials. The analysis shows that development is stable and prominent in the UNGA corpus, but that its meanings are not equally weighted. The strongest development code groups are Technical and Scientific Capacity and Institutional and Regulatory Capacity. Development is therefore most consistently translated into data production, scientific research, stock assessment, monitoring, control and surveillance, compliance, port State implementation, RFMO participation, technology transfer and capacity-building. Social and distributive meanings, including food security, small-scale fisheries, gender, Indigenous Peoples, vulnerability, market access, productive sovereignty and disproportionate burden, become increasingly visible, especially in the later period. However, they are often incorporated through an implementation-centred structure. The dissertation argues that due regard and the special requirements of developing States have acquired clearer institutional form where they align with the functional needs of the fisheries regime, but remain less settled where they require allocation, burden-sharing, correction of historical advantage or stronger recognition of community authority. Description: M.A. Ocean Gov.(Melit.) Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149751 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z