Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?
Abstract
Recent reports suggest that most of the world's commercial fisheries could collapse within decades. Although poor fisheries governance is often implicated, evaluation of solutions remains rare. Bioeconomic theory and case studies suggest that rights-based catch shares can provide individual incentives for sustainable harvest that is less prone to collapse. To test whether catch-share fishery reforms achieve these hypothetical benefits, we have compiled a global database of fisheries institutions and catch statistics in 11,135 fisheries from 1950 to 2003. Implementation of catch shares halts, and even reverses, the global trend toward widespread collapse. Institutional change has the potential for greatly altering the future of global fisheries.
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References and Notes
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Database (2007 version) of global fisheries catches of the Sea Around Us Project (Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada). This database is based on a consolidation of several major data sources such as the FAO capture fisheries and its regional bodies, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas STATLANT database, and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, as well as data provided from the Canadian, United States, and other governments.
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Other forms of property rights may induce similar incentives. For example, territorial user right fisheries and community concessions provide localized incentives to steward the stock. These institutions were not counted as catch shares because they typically occur on a much smaller spatial scale than the LME catch data.
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See supporting online material for details.
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The divergence between ITQ and non-ITQ fisheries is even more pronounced for less conservative definitions of collapse; i.e. 1 to 6% of historical maximum catch (Fig. 1B).
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The LMEs with at least one fishery managed using an ITQ by 2003 are the California Current, Gulf of Alaska, Humboldt Current, Iceland Shelf, New Zealand Shelf, Scotian Shelf, Southest Australian Shelf, Southeast U.S. Continental Shelf, Southwest Australian Shelf, and West-Central Australian Shelf.
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We thank the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation for generous financial support; the Sea Around Us Project for making the catch data publicly available; C. Wong and T. Kidman for helping to compile the database; B. Hansen for helpful comments; and J. Prince, K. Bonzon, and J. Toth for assisting with verifying the catch-share database.
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Published In
Science
Volume 321 | Issue 5896
19 September 2008
19 September 2008
Copyright
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 22 April 2008
Accepted: 19 August 2008
Published in print: 19 September 2008
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