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Stock Stewardship Discussion
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Stock Stewardship/Biomass Allocations
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Subject Beyond ITQs - Stock Stewardship Shares
Date
Wed Jan 26 2005 12:31
Author Dick Allen
(rba@FisheryConservation.net)
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Beyond ITQs -
Conceptual Partial Populations and Population Stewardship Shares
Conceptual Partial Populations and Population Stewardship Shares Can …
1. Replace the “race for fish” with a “race to conserve;”
2. Transform group punishment into community incentive;
3. Eliminate Lowest-Common-Denominator management;
4. Convert “winner-take-all” political battles into win-win scenarios;
5. Create both responsibility and accountability among fishery participants;
6. Make fishery conservation a worthwhile investment.
Why Fisheries Fail
Failures in resource management, including fisheries, are often attributed to the presence of “externalities” – the fact that the cost of one person’s actions are often spread out among many other people, while the person that imposes the cost gets all the benefit. When one person increases his fishing effort, for example, that person gets all the benefits of catching more fish, but all of the other harvesters share in the cost associated with having less fish in the ocean.
In searching for solutions to environmental problems, economists seek to internalize the costs and benefits associated with the use of natural resources. If resource harvesters pay the full costs associated with their activities, and reap the full benefits, they will attempt to minimize costs and maximize benefits. Population stewardship shares and conceptual partial populations have the potential to simplify and improve fishery management, in part because they internalize costs and benefits associated with fishing.
Stratis Gavaris, Conceptual Partial Populations, and Elementary Management Units
In a 1996 article in the Canadian Journal of Fishery Science, Stratis Gavaris suggested that the fish stock could be partitioned into “conceptual partial populations” that are “entrusted to the care of individuals or groups of fishers operating under common rules…” He called these groups of fishers elementary management units or EMUs. According to Gavaris, EMUs would “earn a share of recruiting year-classes according to the relative magnitude of the spawning potential of their partial population, which reflects their success at stewardship of the population share entrusted to their care.” Thus the term population stewardship shares.
The difference between a state-by-state quota or a sector TAC (Total Allowable Catch) and a population stewardship share is that a population stewardship share is a share of the population itself, not a predetermined catch share of an overall TAC for the stock. A state or sector would be responsible for the health of its share of the resource, not just responsible for keeping its catch within its share of a TAC prescribed on the basis of the health of the entire stock.
Eliminating the “Lowest Common Denominator” Approach
State by state quotas and sector shares of an overall TAC do not provide an incentive for a state or sector to be more conservative than the standards that went into the calculation of the TAC. With apportioned TACs, if one state or sector were to leave a portion of its share in the water to conserve, the benefits of that conservation would be distributed among all states or sectors, diluting the benefits to the state or sector that did the conserving. By basing each sector’s future share of the recruitment into the fishery on the spawning potential of its conceptual partial population, Gavaris creates a “race to conserve” rather than the “race for fish” that is generally associated with TAC management. Each sector would reap the benefits of its success and pay the price for its failure. This contrasts with the “group punishment” character of the present system, which requires all sectors to cut back when stock assessments demonstrate that “someone” is catching too much and conserving too little.
More or Less Complex?
Given the unmanageable complexity of our current approach to fishery management, the question immediately arises whether a system of population stewardship shares would be more or less complex. In fact, population stewardship shares could simplify fishery management.
Much of the complexity of the current system arises from a mismatch between the natural complexity of the fishery and the artificial complexity of the fishery management system. Gavaris attributes part of the failure of the Canadian system to “limited scope and flexibility to accommodate local circumstances or to permit diverse implementations of the strategy.”
Fishery Models, Stock Assessments, and Management Guidance
The first step in simplifying fishery management is to recognize that there are two distinct scientific components of fishery management. One (stock assessment) is essentially backward-looking and the other (characterized by egg- and yield-per-recruit models) is forward-looking. The management system generally fails to make a distinction between these two components, as is reflected in statements to the effect that a decision on a management strategy must wait for the latest stock assessment. The problem with this approach is that management is always behind the curve, responding to what has already happened, rather than planning in advance how to use the available fish.
Political Advantages
Population stewardship shares do not require artificial lines in the ocean and they do not require complete agreement on management policies. State by state quotas could simply be converted into population stewardship shares. States could allocate their shares among competing user groups on the same basis as they do now. Catch reporting provides information on how a state or a sector is managing its conceptual partial population. The management unit can choose whether to use quotas, trip limits, days at sea, or other management tools, but its success will be measured by the quantity and size distribution of its removals from its partial population. Rather than the current “winner-take-all” approach to management, competing management philosophies need not fight to the finish – each can demonstrate its benefits as a distinct management unit.
Everyone understands why banks don’t debit the accounts of all customers when one has an overdraft. And everyone doesn’t get a credit when one person makes a deposit. Some folks let their interest accumulate and compound, while others don’t. Why shouldn’t fish be managed with the same logic?
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