Chapter 3 Right-based fisheries management

Abstract

Over the past several yeas, there has been a gradual movement towards market-based fisheries management systems and a parallel decline of conventional state-based command and control regimes. Market-based systems are specific right-based formulations, which rely on market forces to internalize the externalities found in fisheries resources. Although other solutions are also possible (for example, individual effort or input quotas and individual territorial quotas or even group quotas) individual transferable quota (ITQ) programs have monopolized the theoretical, empirical, and also the political approach to market-based fisheries management. The efficiency of ITQs is the result of two related issues. First, because ITQ systems are based on a long-standing traditional instrument—total allowable catches (TACs)—their adoption does not, apparently, involve a total rupture with the status quo. This implies the possibility of taking advantage of much of the biological research-based knowledge surrounding overall quota setting. Second, given that ITQs are TAC-based, they are able to simultaneously address both biological and economic goals. Additionally, with the initial allocation of individual quotas and the introduction of transferability rules, certain distributional goals may be pursued. Last, ITQs are in the favor of a world economic policy framework highly inspired by neo-liberal philosophy. This chapter deals with the knowledge base for a right-based fisheries management system (RBFMS).