Socioeconomics of Individual Transferable Quotas and Community-Based Fishery Management

In many fisheries around the world, the failures of centralized, top-down management have produced a shift toward co-management—collaboration and sharing of decision making between government and stakeholders. This trend has led to a major debate between two very different co-management approaches—community-based fishery management and market-based individual transferable quota management. This paper examines the debate over the relative merits of these models and undertakes a socioeconomic analysis of the two approaches. The paper includes (1) an analysis of differences in the structure, philosophical nature, and underlying value systems of each, including a discussion of their treatment of property rights; (2) a socioeconomic evaluation of the impacts of each system on boat owners, fishers, crew members, other fishery participants, and coastal communities, as well as the distribution of benefits and costs among fishery participants; and (3) examination of indirect economic effects that can occur through impacts on conservation and fishery sustainability. The latter relate to (a) the conservation ethic, (b) the flexibility of management, (c) the avoidance of waste, and (d) the efficiency of enforcement. The paper emphasizes the need for a broader approach to analyzing fishery management options, one that recognizes and properly assesses the diversity of choices, and that takes into account the interaction of the fishery with broader community and regional realities.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Irreversible Investment and Optimal Fisheries Management: A Stochastic Analysis

In recent years, attention has been devoted to fishery management problems that arise because capital embodied in fishing fleets is often nonmalleable. having few if any alternative uses. This problem of irreversible investment was analyzed by Clark et al. (1979), using a deterministic model. In reality, however, most investment decisions must be made within an uncertain environment. This paper describes recent efforts to account for uncertainty in analyzing the problem of optimal fishery investment, where the uncertainty is caused by stochastic variability in the resource stock from year to year.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Development, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

The Right Form of Rights: Commentary, 4SSF Conference

This article written in the ICSF's Sumadra Report 51 comments on deliberations held at the 4SSF Conference on October 13-17, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand which seemed to offer hope for a shift away from the customary simplistic thinking on rights-based management in fisheries

The Atlantic Canadian Groundfishery: Roots of a Collapse

While many explanations have been proposed for the 1990s Atlantic Canadian groundfishery collapse-ranging from natural causes to over-fishing and damaging technologies, to failures of fishery management and science-this paper examines the possibility that underlying these, at the roots of the collapse, liae set of entrenched attitudes that have driven fishery decision making. These attitudes, about the natural world, about management and about how the fishery should function, became influential especially where they prevailed at the institutional level, as the accepted wisdom among the dominant players in government and the fishery. Four sets of conservation-related attitudes are considered, dealing with (1) the extent to which management responsibilities are accepted and shared by fishery regulators and fishers, (2) the burden of proof and where it should lie in judging conservation concerns, (3) a view that conservation can wait , to avoid disrupting catches and fishing activity, and (4) a belief that the system works , that fundamental change in fishery management is unnecessary. It is noted that a failure to modify attitudes in the fishery may well lead to a situation in which history once again repeats itself

Property Rights and Use Rights in Fisheries

This report was presented at the 8th Conference of the International Institute for Fisheries Economics and Trade in 1998 and provides the framework for understanding and further investigations of property rights and use rights in fisheries

Topical Problems in Fishery Economics: An Introduction

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

THE ECONOMICS OF ILLEGAL FISHING: A BEHAVIORAL MODEL

This paper analyzes the microeconomic behavior of fishers responding to imperfectly enforced regulations through illegal fishing and efforts to avoid detection. An intraseasonal optimization model is analyzed to determine optimal (profit-maximizing) harvesting strategies at the individual fisher level in response to input controls (such as gear or labor usage) or output controls (individual harvest quotas). For each regulatory option, the analysis explores: (a) the manner by which enforcement affects individual decisions concerning fishing and avoidance activity, (b) the level of enforcement necessary to achieve specified conservation goals, and (c) the role of various behavioral parameters in determining fisher decisions. It is shown, in particular, that the nature of avoidance behavior plays a crucial role in determining fisher response to regulations. Broad implications of illegal behavior on the sustainability of fishery systems are also discussed.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Development and Diversification: Sustainability Strategies for a Costa Rican Fishing Cooperative

This is one case study of 32 in the volume: Case studies in fisheries self-governance which was published as a FAO Fisheries Technical Paper. In this chapter: Over the past several decades, scholars have argued over governance strategies for management for commons and common-pool resources (CPRs). In fact, the theory of the commons has undergone major transformations, moving from the "tragedy of the commons" model, to dealing with small-scale, community-based systems as ways of promoting self-organization and self-governance (Ostrom, 1990; Berkes, 2006). Within the fisheries sector, the use of rights based management strategies to re-establish sustainability in open-access fisheries is becoming increasingly popular. The experience with TURFS in Chile, which was implemented as a way to avoid the collapse of the loco fishery, has been successful in terms of managing some benthic artisanal fisheries in a sustainable way and generating basic incentives for fishers' empowerment. However, if the policy is going to succeed in the future, scientists and practitioners must respond to important challenges. Most published studies on the human dimensions of MEABRs stress the need for fishers to have more liberty managing MEABRs as a way to adapt these to local realities and create incentives for developing institutions of self-governance (Castilla and Defeo, 2001; Meltzoff et al., 2002; Castilla et al., 2007; Gelcich et al., 2005a,b, 2006, 2007; World Bank, 2006), i.e. to shift from the current co-management approach used in Chile (= collaborative co-management; Sen and Nielsen, 1996) towards an adaptive co-management approach. Folke et al. (2002), defined adaptive co-management as "the process by which institutional arrangements and ecological knowledge are revised in a dynamic, ongoing process of learning by doing". Adaptive co-management combines the 'dynamic learning' characteristic of adaptive management (Holling, 2001) with the 'linkage' characteristic of cooperative management (Jentoft, 2000), and collaborative management (Olsson, Folke and Berkes, 2004). The adaptive co-management approach treats policies as hypotheses and management as experiments from which managers can learn (Gunderson, 2000). Most importantly, adaptive co-management theory implies that management practices should be adjusted by the monitoring of feedback signals of social-ecological change (Berkes, Colding and Folke, 2003). This shift towards adaptive co-management would imply the need for participatory research. Small-scale coastal artisanal fisheries with well-demarcated fishing grounds provide ideal situations for experimental management research (Castilla, 2000; Johannes, 2002; World Bank, 2006). In addition, if MEABRs are going to successfully adapt, managers should encourage local communities (associations) to experiment and continuously adapt to changes (social or ecological). These are factors we feel are an essential part of the so-called Ecosystem-Based Management Approach (FAO, 2003; Arkema, Abramson and Dewsbury, 2006; Christie et al., 2007). At present the MEABR policy has left few legal alternatives for community experiments and subsequent governance adaptations. This is unfortunate as participatory research in support of adaptive management is becoming almost commonplace in many developing countries (Edwards-Jones, 2001) under the premise that the participation of resource users and other stakeholders is important not only in the management of resources, but also in research orientated toward the generation of information and innovations that shape how resources are understood and exploited (Johnson et al., 2004). In addition it forms a basic building block for self-governance of MEABR resources

Optimal Capacity Decisions in a Developing Fishery

The problem of estimating optimal fishing capacity for a developing fishery is discussed, using the methods of Bayesian decision analysis. The results obtained indicate that quite good decisions can often be made on the basis of limited prior information as to fish stock productivity, particularly if a conservative approach allowing for subsequent increases in capacity is employed.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Development, International Relations/Trade, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

On pedagogy of the oppressed: An appraisal of Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education

Education is critical to human development. Scholars have always been concerned with the appropriate method or pedagogy to adopt for education. Usually two parties are involved in any learning process- the teacher and the learner(s). The contention on pedagogy has always been whether learning ought to be teacher centered or student centered. While the proponents of traditional pedagogue in education emphasize the experience of the teacher; most modern and contemporary scholars like John Dewey and Paulo Freire emphasize the experience of the learner. Paulo Freire rejected the traditional education system tagging it a banking system because it tends to impose the experience of the teacher on the learner; undermining the experience and personal total development of the learner. He proposed a critical pedagogue as an ideal; a pedagogue that is problem-posing with emphasis laid on the experience of the learner. This article studies Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogue using the analytic method. It finds that Paulo Freire’s pedagogue is emancipatory because it promotes freedom of thought, encourages innovation and is capable of molding people into active citizens with the ability to hold their leaders responsible for bad governance. In this sense, the pedagogue can be handy for political participation and nation building. The article also finds that the pedagogue can lead to anarchy in the learning environment with its seeming overemphasis on the freedom of thought of the learners; it can give learners undue control or influence over their teachers. Keywords: Education, Pedagogy, Experience