Conclusions: Assessing, Comparing and Explaining Institutional Resilience to Climate Change

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Climate Change and Management of Antarctic Krill Fisheries

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Arctic Geopolitics, Climate Change, and Resilient Fisheries Management

This article examines the resilience of fisheries management institutions to the combined challenges inherent in geopolitical and climatic change. Increased emphasis on geopolitical considerations tends to make governments more, not less, inclined to seek practical management arrangements acceptable to all; and as this article argues, solutions that can accommodate underlying geopolitical tensions tend to be particularly resilient. Mechanisms that may explain this relationship include interest aggregation, as when governmental decision-makers worry that a sector dispute may escalate and spill over into issue-areas that are closer to core national interests. A second mechanism is sector-gains protection, as when fisheries officials and scientists are determined to insulate mutually advantageous institutional arrangements against the ups and downs of general political relations. Combined with a third mechanism, associated with the “malignancy” of the management problem, including the extent of free-rider incentives among participants, these mechanisms are also relevant for explaining variation among Arctic fisheries regimes in their resilience to climate change—a second test of the ability of Arctic governance processes to adapt to more demanding circumstances.Arctic Geopolitics, Climate Change, and Resilient Fisheries ManagementacceptedVersio

Climate Change and Institutional Resilience in Arctic Environmental Governance

This article highlights recent successes and failures in efforts to manage Arctic marine living resources to improve our understanding of institutional resilience - that is, the ability of cooperative institutions to maintain their performance despite severe disruptions to their operating environments. Rising ocean temperatures and other impacts of climate change may alter the spatial distribution of fish stocks, including their relative attachment to exclusive economic zones and their availability on the high seas. As evident in the examined Arctic cases, which involve the world’s largest stocks of cod, herring and mackerel, such changes may complicate core resource management tasks, including the regulatory task of reaching an agreement among user states on quotas and other restraints that align with scientific advice. The cross-case variance in regulatory resilience to climate-related and other changes in cooperative circumstances sheds light on general propositions regarding the drivers and inhibitors of institutional resilience, including institutional characteristics and the severity of the political challenges posed by changing circumstances

Barents Sea Fisheries – the IUU Struggle

Considerable fishing operations occur in the European part of the Arctic Ocean, especially in waters under Norwegian and Russian jurisdiction, and regional states have recently made important advances in combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.1 During the 2000s, illegal harvesting of Northeast Arctic cod reached levels that jeopardized stock sustainability and coastal-state quota restraint, shifted wealth from legal fishers to cheaters, and promoted corrupt practices in production and distribution chains. A strengthening of various port-state measures appears promising for combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in the region. Such measures have evolved from unilateral refusal to allow landing of fish taken outside international quota arrangements to a multilateral Scheme of Control and Enforcement under the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC).Keywords: Barents Sea, IUU fishing, fisheries management, codCitation: Arctic Review on Law and Politics, vol. 1, 2/2010 p. 207-224. ISSN 1891-625

Avoiding Institutional Failure: Risk Factors and Response Strategies

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Introduction: Climate Change and Resilient Fisheries Management

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Antarctic krill Euphausia superba: spatial distribution, abundance, and management of fisheries in a changing climate

Antarctic krill Euphausia superba, a keystone species in the Southern Ocean, is highly relevant for studying effects of climate-related shifts on management systems. Krill provides a key link between primary producers and higher trophic levels and supports the largest regional fishery. Any major perturbation in the krill population would have severe ecological and economic ramifications. We review the literature to determine how climate change, in concert with other environmental changes, alters krill habitat, affects spatial distribution/abundance, and impacts fisheries management. Findings recently reported on the effects of climate change on krill distribution and abundance are inconsistent, however, raising questions regarding methods used to detect changes in density and biomass. One recent study reported a sharp decline in krill densities near their northern limit, accompanied by a poleward contraction in distribution in the Southwest Atlantic sector. Another recent study found no evidence of long-term decline in krill density or biomass and reported no evidence of a poleward shift in distribution. Moreover, with predicted decreases in phytoplankton production, vertical foraging migrations to the seabed may become more frequent, also impacting krill production and harvesting. Potentially cumulative impacts of climate change further compound the management challenge faced by CCAMLR, the organization responsible for conservation of Antarctic marine living resources: to detect changes in the abundance, distribution, and reproductive performance of krill and krill-dependent predator stocks and to respond to such change by adjusting its conservation measures. Based on CCAMLR reports and documents, we review the institutional framework, outline how climate change has been addressed within this organization, and examine the prospects for further advances toward ecosystem risk assessment and an adaptive management system.publishedVersio

International Nonregimes: A Research Agenda1

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146934/1/j.1468-2486.2007.00672.x.pd