Factors driving the implementation of fishery reforms

Abstract

The challenges of common-pool resource harvesting have confronted the world's fisheries for centuries. Efforts to mitigate these challenges have led to an extensive literature on fishery performance under alternative management practices, but relatively little evidence exists on the factors that drive the adoption of these management approaches. In this study, a database describing 67 fishery cooperatives around the world is analyzed to help fill this gap. The analysis is focused on two widely implemented catch share management strategies, Territorial Use Rights Fisheries and Individual Quotas. Our empirical approach and interpretation of results are organized according to Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework. Among the evaluated factors, governance aspects appear to be most important to management adoption, specifically the presence of legal conditions on cooperative existence, and the strength of law and stability of governing institutions. It is postulated that the same factors that favor adoption of specific catch share management strategies would also generally play a positive role in their performance. If this is true, our results highlight the importance of considering both sets of factors when trying to spread the implementation of management tools, and show that enabling conditions associated to existing governance structures deserve great emphasis by those who seek to adopt management strategies like catch shares.