Property Rights In Fisheries Research Articles

An analysis of property rights in the Fijian qoliqoli

Fisheries management in Fiji's inshore fishery exists in a plural legal and governance system comprised on the one part by customary fishing rights, and on the other by centralized ownership. The ambiguity in this arrangement stems from a lack of understanding of the property rights of customary fishing rights. This paper aims to clarify what property rights in Fiji's inshore fisheries consists of by applying the bundle of rights property theory analysis using Schlager and Ostrom's five property rights, i.e., access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation. A clearer understanding of property rights in a fisheries resource is crucial for sustainable fisheries management.

Measuring Benefits from a Marketing Cooperative in the Copper River Fishery

The degradation of product quality is one form of rent dissipation resulting from incomplete property rights in fisheries. Industry structure and information asymmetries can also lead to underinvestment in product quality, even when property rights are well defined. In this article we empirically examine whether the voluntary formation of a marketing cooperative was able to mitigate market failures that led to the production of inferior‐quality fish. Specifically, we use a difference‐in‐differences estimation strategy to measure the impact that the Copper River Fishermen's Cooperative, an Alaskan salmon marketing cooperative, had on ex‐vessel salmon prices and salmon quality measures. We find that the cooperative was able to improve product quality, as well as attract and sustain a higher price for its salmon. Our findings provide empirical support for many of the key tenets of cooperative theory. Specifically, we find evidence that marketing cooperatives can address existing market failures, that marketing cooperatives can have advantages in high‐quality product markets, and that over time, as a result of their success, marketing cooperatives may lead to lasting producer benefits even though they become obsolete due to nonmember free‐riding.

A Study on the Use and Limitations of Property Rights in Fisheries Act

A Study on the Use and Limitations of Property Rights in Fisheries Act

Territorial user rights for artisanal fisheries in Chile – intended and unintended outcomes

Granting property rights in fisheries is assumed to provide incentives for sustainable resource exploitation. These rights might also open other income options for fishers, including some that go beyond the original objectives intended by authorities establishing the right. The opportunity for alternative uses is especially high if the details of these rights are not clearly identified. In Chile, a de novo TURF (Territorial User Rights for Fishery) system, called Management Exploitation Areas for Benthic Resources (Áreas de Manejo y Explotación de Recursos Bentónicos-AMERB) was created to achieve sustainable exploitation of benthic resources. This study compares two small-scale fishing communities in Chile, Guayacán and Huentelauquén, representing two typical contrasting settings, regarding geographical contexts and surroundings, origin, history, location, social embeddedness, main fisheries activities as well as the motivation and the process through which they acquired their AMERB. While in Guayacán the main fishing activity outside the AMERB is the giant squid and finfish fishery, in Huentelauquén the main and traditional activity has been diving for benthic resources. The objectives to acquire their AMERBs were different in both cases. Huentelauquén applied the AMERB for their traditional activity, the fishery of Concholepas concholepas (“loco”), thus in accordance with the official objective of the AMERB. Due to reduced catches of loco, fishers also added the collection of kelps, using their AMERB to control access to the entire coast surrounding their fishing community, beyond the limits of their AMERB. In Guayacán the AMERB, applied for the management of scallops and a species of red algae, began to be used for sea squirt aquaculture. Within the framework of sustainable fisheries implied by the AMERBs, there was in both cases a clear expectation to gain new sources of income. However with time both AMERBs are being used as a tool for territorial exclusion of other fishers beyond the limits of their respective AMERBs. In Huentelauquén fishers mention mostly negative aspects about the performance of their AMERB, given the poor economic results, being unsatisfied with the AMERB system in general, because they feel that the system disrupted their traditional migration along the coast. In Guayacán, fishers mentioned mostly positive aspects for their AMERB, as it was an opportunity to add new activities. Both examples show that rights-based management approaches are very attractive; they could promote new uses or developments, whose sustainability nevertheless needs to be analyzed further. The analyzed case studies show that, contrary to how the system was developed in Chile, a more bottom-up implementation of new management arrangements may make it easier to agree on common objectives, and/or leave more freedom for fishers to adjust and arrange their livelihood. Considering the importance the AMERBs have acquired for fishers, these kinds of systems need flexible regulations in order that fishers can adapt the system to local traditions, uses or needs and also to their learning and adapting capacities.

Property Rights in Fisheries: How Much Can Individual Transferable Quotas Accomplish?

AbstractIndividual transferable quotas (ITQs) are one of the property rights instruments that have been employed to improve economic efficiency in fisheries. ITQs are not high-quality property righ...

Do Property Rights Lead to Sustainable Catch Increases?

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) assign property rights in fisheries by granting individual fishers a tradable share of the total allowable catch (TAC). ITQs were originally proposed to enhance profitability and safety, but may also provide incentives for more conservation-minded fishing practices. Indeed, recent empirical evidence shows a reduction in the likelihood of stock collapse and a threefold increase in catches two decades after ITQ implementation. Yet these spectacular catch increases follow modest 20% reductions in reported catches. We used standard fisheries models to analyze whether these catch trends are consistent with the theory underlying conservation benefits from property rights. We find that it appears unlikely that catch increases are attributable to ITQs alone. Improved catch reporting systems are often enacted concurrent with ITQs and may plausibly explain sustained catch increases. The existence of this alternative explanation warrants caution about claims that property rights are the cause of sustainable catch gains.

Jens Warming on Open Access, the Pigovian Tax, and Property Rights

This article summarizes the contribution in fisheries economics by the Danish economist Jens Warming. Warming provides an early reference on the problem of open access, precedes Arthur Pigou in suggesting an optimal tax as a correction measure, which I refer to as a Warming landing tax in fisheries, and explains how property rights in fisheries will lead to maximized resource rent and prevent overfishing. What is missing in Warming's description of the problem is the dynamic aspect and that the economics of natural resources should be analyzed in a capital theoretic framework, which was later established in the 1950s by Anthony Scott.

Fisheries economics: cutting a broad swath in the field of scientific inquiry

Fisheries economics: cutting a broad swath in the field of scientific inquiry

Internationally Shared Fish Stocks, the High Seas, and Property Rights in Fisheries

This paper is concerned with the impact of the advance of property rights in fisheries upon the management of internationally shared fishery resources. The management of these shared fishery resources did, in fact, come to prominence because of a revolutionary advance in state property rights to fishery resources through the advent of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regime. The revolution in state property rights to fishery resources is not yet complete, however. The incompleteness of the revolution, it is argued, creates serious difficulties for the effective management for an important class of shared fishery resources, namely straddling and highly migratory fish stocks. The paper then discusses the impact, actual and potential, of the development of private property rights in fisheries upon the management of these resources. The discussion is speculative, however, and can be no more than that until there has been further advances in the game theoretic analysis of shared fish stock management.

Capacity Analysis and Fisheries Policy: Theory versus Practice

. Effective fisheries managementthat addresses this underlying problem should, therefore, remove the need to con-sider capacity as a separate issue. Why then consider capacity management ratherthan just fisheries management?The answer to this is unfortunately simple: most fisheries managers are noteconomists. In many countries, conservation and social factors take precedence overeconomic considerations. Improving property rights in fisheries is often perceived tobe associated with a decline in employment, and there is a reluctance to introducesuch measures in many countries. Further, with greater focus on environmental con-siderations, measures that limit catch are often preferred over measures that improveprofitability in the fishery.The FAO International Plan of Action for the Management of Fishing Capacity(IPOA-Capacity) has forced the focus to shift, at least in part, from the resource tothe exploiters of the resource. While “fisheries management” can be considered toinvolve only the resource, “capacity management” must also include considerationof the fleet.A review by FAO (2004) found that in the five years since the introduction ofthe IPOA-Capacity, 82% of States surveyed had brought capacity management intoconsideration. Further, only 4% of States decided that a capacity management planwas unnecessary. Two such States that decided not to develop a separate capacitymanagement plan were New Zealand and Australia—both of which utilized rights-based management in their key fisheries.Most countries were found to have adopted an input-based measure of capacity.In some cases, capacity is measured in terms of vessel numbers only (

Property Rights in Fisheries: Iceland’s Experience with ITQs

The fundamental problem of economic inefficiency in fisheries, the so-called common property problem, may be seen to be caused by inadequate or lacking property rights in the underlying natural resources. The introduction of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) into fisheries represents an attempt to correct this failure. ITQs, however, are not property rights in the relevant natural resources, i.e. the fish stocks and their habitat. They are merely harvesting rights and thus far from ideal as property rights. Nevertheless, ITQs have been introduced in numerous fisheries around the world, apparently with generally, even consistently, good economic results. This paper outlines the basic theory of property rights and the strengths and weaknesses of ITQs as property rights in fisheries. The paper goes on to discuss the Icelandic ITQ system and compares its property rights value with that of the New Zealand ITQ system and the Norwegian IQ system. Finally, the paper reviews some measures of the economic outcomes of the ITQ system in Iceland.

Use of private access rights in fisheries: effective management through public transferability?

Abstract The aim in this paper is to put forward an approach to the issue of access rights that is suitable to Ireland's crustacean and molluscan fisheries. We begin by reviewing proceedings of a recent international conference on the issue of property rights in fisheries. We then pose objectives for fisheries management to be met by our approach. Following this, we outline the present limited entry initiative regarding crustacean and molluscan fisheries in Ireland. We conclude that—for fishers to operate with, but not exchange licences like, owners—a licence should be returned to the issuing authority once it is no longer being fished by its holder.

Neoliberalism in the oceans: “rationalization,” property rights, and the commons question

Neoliberalism, with its emphasis on privatization and marketization, is becoming a dominant mode of ocean governance. In this paper I show that neoliberalism in ocean fisheries has a specific form and history based on the ways that, for the last 50 years, regulation debates have centered on the question of the commons. Focus on the role of the commons in problems such as overfishing and overcapacity has contributed to convergence of different viewpoints around neoliberal, market-oriented approaches that try to harness the profit motive to conservation and economic efficiency. I trace the idea of property rights in fisheries from the point in the 1950s when economists first identified the commons as the underlying cause of fisheries problems, through extended political jurisdiction, to recent emphasis on the benefits of common property. Despite their differences, proponents of these different viewpoints all take property as their central problematic and contribute to the idea that creating market incentives, by specifying property rights, is the foundation upon which proper use of ocean resources rests. I illustrate these ideas with a description of the shift toward privatization in the fisheries of the US portion of the North Pacific, which have a direct annual value of almost $1 billion. Neoliberal approaches to fisheries regulation are not simply spillover from larger trends toward market-based governance, but instead are influenced by the ways that past policy orientations toward fisheries have centered on enclosing the oceans within carefully delimited regimes of property rights, be those regimes of collective, state, or private control.

Bargaining, Uncertainty, and Property Rights in Fisheries

Garrett Hardin's “tragedy of the commons” metaphor is commonly invoked to account for the unfortunate state of world fisheries. But the world s oceans are no longer a global commons and have not been so for the past two decades. Open-access regimes have persisted within many exclusive economic zones (EEZs) during this time, but coastal states' authority to regulate domestic fisheries has existed for more than a generation. Faced with the prospect of Hardin's tragedy, coastal states have had more than twenty years to devise institutional constraints that would prevent it. This article asserts that the dismal experience with EEZs is in large part attributable to distributive bargaining problems that arose within coastal states in the wake of EEZ extension. Moreover, the article argues that high levels of uncertainty that characterize the early stages of institutional development have exacerbated these problems. Finally, the article demonstrates how the variety of institutional designs and paths of institutional development that are observed in the cases of Iceland, Norway, and Atlantic Canada result from the different configurations of political power and political structure within each case. While the empirical discussion is focused upon property rights and fisheries, the theoretical discussion of bargaining and uncertainty has widespread application across comparative and international politics.

Fishing for Privilege

The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Community has for year attracted widespread criticism from economists, politicians and many other commentators. The Common Fisheries Policy is less widely known but it. too, neglects the truths of economic analysis. Antony Dnes, Lecturer in Business Economics at the University of Edinburgh, demonstrates how the neglect by the EEC of private property rights in fisheries encourages inefficiency, damages fish stocks, and encourages fishermen to adopt practices against their long‐term interests.