With this purpose, the research relies on three main sources of information, i.e. peer-reviewed articles obtained from the SCOPUS database – the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, gray literature, and 27 semi-structured in-depth interviews. The investigation of peer-reviewed articles within the SCOPUS database
was conducted through examining the entire text of articles – including the title and abstract – to detect the combination of the following two keywords: (i) aquaculture and conflict, (ii) aquaculture and Europe, (iii) selleckchem aquaculture and the country name – Spain, France, Norway, Greece, and Italy. These five countries were selected for the keyword search because they have the greatest volume of marine finfish aquaculture production
in Europe. Accordingly, 2597 articles have been reviewed, out of which 213 articles were selected due to their relation to socio-environmental or socioeconomic studies on aquaculture. The latter group was refined in order to identify studies providing specific information on marine finfish aquaculture Metformin solubility dmso conflicts in Europe. Additionally, corresponding references in these articles were incorporated into the analysis to have a wider coverage of the existing peer-reviewed literature. Although the most relevant articles studying socio-environmental conflicts in the SCOPUS database were limited in number and detail, they helped to identify 12 conflictive cases, their places, actors involved and their arguments. Secondly, a review of gray literature including documents and statistics published by FAO and EU, reports and press releases of NGOs [24], [25], [26] and [27], EU legislation and guidelines, documents about Common Fisheries Policy, national or European strategy documents, websites of movements [28] and [29] opposing fish farms, and some local or regional newspaper articles were employed to
complete the information obtained from peer-reviewed articles. Following the discussions held in meetings, congresses and conferences, Methamphetamine in which many aquaculture sector representatives, public authorities and researchers participated, facilitated the comprehension of the most common discourses and up-to-date debates. The third part of data collection was based on semi-structured in-depth interviews. In this phase, interviews were conducted with NGOs, researchers, activists, local people, aquaculture sector representatives, and European or national public administrations. They enabled the detection of other conflicts and provided a way to acquire more details about those already identified. Between February and September 2013, 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders from 12 countries (Table 1). The selection of countries for interviews aimed to cover the most representative countries in Europe in terms of marine finfish aquaculture production.