Barents Ecomap

HÅKON JENSEN
Tromsø

Fisherman Håkon Jensen has been engaged in fishery- and northern politics for decades. Over the years he has drawn his political thoughts with sharp colors on different maps capturing controversies in the North: the conflict areas between fishing and oil, spawning areas, disputed waters, transportation corridors, strategic military zones.

For Jensen and his Russian partners the ecosystem map is a serious attempt to get the Norwegian and Russian governments to draft a new fishery policy for the Barents Sea.
Jensen’s map is a strong visual representation of how an individual and practitioner, based in the Barents Region, is occupied with cross-border fishing development and city planning. The map visualizes the ecosystem in the Barents Sea and the need for joint research of its resources, shows how diverse and fragile the ecosystem is, how fish flocks migrates without borders, etc. The map depicts the issue emotionally. Nowadays there´s so much focus on oil and gas, that fishery and fishing communities are underprioritized in public debates.

At the bottom of the map, Jensen has drawn an entirely new city on the Kola coast – a city with about 10,000 inhabitants, where in his opinion one should run a large-scale industry based on the sea resources.
This is an example of a fisherman from the north of Norway who minds no borders, who plans a new city specializing on the fishing industry based on shared quotas, and at the same time visualizes it in a strong way.

Barents Ecomap

Oslo

Tromsø

Murmansk

Rovaniemi