An Economic Analysis of Blast Fishing on Indonesian Coral Reefs

Characteristics, impacts and economic costs and benefits of blast fishing have been little investigated and they were therefore studied in Indonesia, at the scale of individual fishing households and of Indonesian society as a whole. Although illegal and highly destructive to coral reefs, blast fishing provides income and fish to a vast number of coastal fishers who claim that they have no alternative to make a living. Crew members in small-, medium- and large-scale blast fishing operations earned net incomes per month of US$55, 146 and 197 respectively. Boat owners in the same types of operations earned US$55, 393 and 1100 respectively. These incomes were comparable to the highest incomes in the conventional coastal fisheries. At the individual household level, the differences between the three types of operations show clear incentives for scale enlargement. The cost-benefit balance at the society level was calculated with an economic model. This analysis showed a net loss after 20 years of blast fishing of US$306,800 per k

The recreational value of coral reefs: A meta-analysis

Coral reefs are highly productive ecosystems that provide a variety of valuable goods and services, including recreational opportunities. The open-access nature and public good characteristics of coral reefs often result in them being undervalued in decision making related to their use and conservation. In response to this, there now exists a substantial economic valuation literature on coral reefs. For the purposes of conducting a meta-analysis of this literature, we collected 166 coral reef valuation studies, 52 of which provided sufficient information for a statistical meta-analysis, yielding 100 separate value observations in total. Focusing on recreational values, we use US$ per visit as the dependent variable in our meta-analysis. The meta-regression results reveal a number of important factors in explaining variation in coral reef recreational values, notably the area of dive sites and the number of visitors. Different valuation methods are shown to produce widely different values, with the contingent valuation method producing significantly lower value estimates. Using a multi-level modelling approach we also control for authorship effects, which proves to be highly significant in explaining variation in value estimates. We assess the prospects for using this analysis for out-of-sample value transfer, and find average transfer errors of 186%. We conclude that there is a need for further high-quality valuation research on coral reefs. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Marine market transformation of the live reef fish food trade in Southeast Asia

Non-PR2020; IFPRI4DG