Black Gold and Grey Areas: Examining the impacts of regulations on the geopolitical-ecology of caviar trade in the European Union

This thesis examines the process of regulating caviar trade in the European Union. EU caviar trade regulations seek to curb overexploitation of critically endangered wild sturgeon and prevent illegal caviar trade. The broad impacts of these regulations are largely overlooked and not understood. This research produces necessary empirical insights by undertaking an in-depth qualitative analysis of the EU caviar trade regulations, and asks: what are the geopolitical-ecological implications of regulating the caviar trade in the European Union?
Geopolitical-ecology refers to how environmental discourses and interventions are mediated through foreign policy agendas, and subsequently shape ecologies with multi-scalar geopolitical effects.
This study draws upon environmental geopolitics, geopolitical ecology, and more-than-human scholarship to develop a framework for more-than-human geopolitical ecology. I deploy this theoretical framework alongside a follow-the-policy methodology, which traces: how caviar trade policies variably materialise in the EU; with what effects; and how these effects are unequally distributed amongst human and nonhuman actors.
In analysing the implications of the EU caviar trade policies, I develop a twofold argument. First, I argue that the regulatory frameworks exhibit a number of gaps and grey areas. These include gaps in content; gaps in enforcement; and gaps in the policy narratives that sustain the regulatory frameworks. Such legislative omissions and ambiguities produce unintended geopolitical-ecological consequences that extend beyond the illegal caviar trade. Indeed, there are broader implications for EU security, geopolitics, and political ecologies.
Second, I argue that caviar and sturgeon are unlikely geopolitical actors. The geopolitical nature of these nonhuman actors is brought to light through the ways in which they reveal inconsistencies in the regulatory frameworks, and thereby co-produce resulting EU geopolitical-ecological configurations.
While developing burgeoning conversations about illegal wildlife trade and the EU, these insights also demonstrate the important role of nonhumans in co-producing geopolitical-ecologies within the region and more broadly.