Property rights to multi-attribute fishery resources

Abstract

The United Nations’ ‘Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries’ urges governments to manage multiple yield, bycatch, and habitat attributes of fishery resources. The information and enforcement costs of multi-attribute management are high, however. As a result, relatively few attributes (generally stock biomass, age structure, and growth) are specified in yield targets, exposing others (e.g., localized abundance, sex) to excessive use in the public domain. Spillovers caused by fishing gear (e.g., gear conflicts, bycatch, habitat damage) generally are regulated with catch limits and area closures that artificially divide or exclude activities which interact due to attribute jointness. Total fishery income is compromised because tradeoffs are not evaluated at the margin. Alternative arrangements that bundle fishery resource attributes are suggested. Bundled property rights could evolve from a comprehensive assignment of usufruct rights which reduce the transaction costs of gathering information on unspecified attributes and of contracting for spillovers. Markets for harvest rights could resolve the simpler gear conflict and bycatch problems. Other interactions (e.g., predation, habitat requirements) would require corporate or collective property rights and governance arrangements that make harvesters and other interested parties the residual claimants of their harvest decisions, subject to government restrictions that protect public goods.