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April 03, 2007
Monbiot on Fisheries
Got to hand it to George, he's right in his diagnosis of what's wrong with the fisheries.
The idiocy of the current management system is breathtaking. The thing is, in most fisheries, we already have the legal powers to stop what's going on. There's only one major fishery that isn't already within the 200 mile exclusive economic zone of one country or another (in the Sea of Okhotsk).
Why do we find it so hard to stand up to fishermen? This tiny
industrial lobby seems to have governments in the palm of its hand.
Every year, the EU sets catch limits for all species way above the
levels its scientists recommend. Governments know that they are
allowing the fishing industry to destroy itself and to destroy the
ecosystem on which it depends. But nothing is sacred, as long as it is
underwater.
The problems of the deep water predators, the sharks and the swordfish will be a little more difficult, precisely because there are no property rights at all.
But As Garrett Hardin pointed out, when you've got a resource which is open on a Marxian basis, and the demand for that resource increases, then you've got to manage access to that resource somehow. You can do it in a social (socialist) or private (capitalist) manner (his descriptions not mine) but manage access you do have to do.
We've tried that social manner and as George points out, the politicians face perverse incentives, which mean that said management simply doesn't work. (Hardin was writing before much of public choice economics had been explored.) So we need to turn to the private methods. We need to connect the incentives to the preservation of the stocks: that means long term , transferable, ownership of said stocks, vested in individuals. They would thus become, instead of hunter gatherers, farmers.
Yes, we should also have no fish zones, we should stop the dumping of bycatch and many other things, but until the incentives for fishermen become aligned with the long term preservation of the fisheries we're simply not going to get anywhere.
We need the marine equivalent of the Enclosure Acts.
April 3, 2007 in Environmentalism | Permalink
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Comments
The Marine Bill that is currently progressing somewhere through the depths of DEFRA will hopefully involve a complete overhaul of British maritime sectors.
The problem is that the sector by sector approach to marine industry means that there is a constant conflict and depletion of resources.
It is hoped that the Marine Bill will encompass a cross-sectoral approach, and will be ecosystem led, so the actual assimilative capacity of the marine environment will be taken into consideration.
So hopefully, the collapsing fish stocks within Britain's EEZ will be addressed. One problem....I can't really see the Scottish Parliament liking this one. It will be very hard to counter one of the most ancient and traditional industries in Britain.
Posted by: lola | Apr 3, 2007 11:38:03 AM
Well said. I read about these issues 10 years ago in Matt Ridley's Origins of Virtue and his Telegraph columns. It's one of those examples of policy when - surely? - we already know pretty much what to do, but lack of - what? - prevents us doing it.
The country that first solves the political problem of implementing long-term generally beneficial policies against the short term interests of small groups will be streets ahead in comparative advantage.
Posted by: Bruce G Charlton | Apr 3, 2007 11:40:25 AM
Enclosure is a nice idea, but who is going to tell the fish?
Posted by: Joe Otten | Apr 3, 2007 12:01:56 PM
Can you tie this in with Land Value Tax though? If you sell off chunks of the sea then fishermen become landlords. If you rent off chunks of the sea (i.e. a bit like Land Value Tax) then the fishermen are tenants and there is no disincetive to over-fish. Perhaps there is a simple answer.
Posted by: Mark Wadsworth | Apr 3, 2007 1:48:06 PM
All your suggestions would probably work, because most of them have already been put in place in Iceland, including a form of privatisation of fishing rights, where they do work very well. However since we are part of the EU the UK cannot follow the Icelandic example.
Tim adds: Err, quite. You have read the masthead?
Posted by: chris strange | Apr 3, 2007 8:07:27 PM
Property right in whales I can imagine - you can tag them and track them, and can therefore have ownership of them (like raindeer herds).
Fish are more of a problem.
Hunter-gathers must have faced this problem before. Have any of them actually solved it?
Tim adds: Yup. Enclosure.
Re fish, Norway, Faroes, Iceland.
Posted by: pseudonymous | Apr 3, 2007 9:12:16 PM
There's only one major fishery that isn't already within the 200 mile exclusive economic zone of one country or another (in the Sea of Okhotsk).
Really? Down at my local beach, where the water is turning liquid once again? I didn't know that.
Tim adds: productive fisheries require shallow water. Almost all shallow water is within the EEAs of one nation or another. Except, yes, some hundreds of miles off your beach.
Posted by: Tim Newman | Apr 3, 2007 9:49:31 PM
Rumblings in DEFRA suggest that the way the Marine Bill would work is slightly similar to the enclosure idea, but with a twist. There would not be squares marked in on charts as such.
Basically, sectors would be based around habitats and ecosystems, so an ecosystem/habitat is identified in a certain area, then the maximum capacity of fishing/shipping/tourism/drilling etc that the habitat/ecosystems can take before degredation starts is assessed.
This way the focus is on conservation first, and fish populations may no longer decline. I say may, because the CFP was supposed to stop fish stocks collapsing, but they took the advice of scientists, and doubled the Total Allowable Catch recommended to an unsustainable level.
Posted by: lola | Apr 4, 2007 12:30:30 PM
Hmmm... From what I remember of Matt Ridley's arguments in The Origins of Virtue he points out that the Tragedy of the Commons didn't apply to commons and doesn't apply to fisheries. Some kind person at the ASI (8-)) linked to a post in which I made a similar argument.
Ridley used the example of lobster fisheries in Maine in which a form of property right has evolved whereby rights to the commons (the fishery) are owned by specific individuals. This is analogous to what happened with the English commons pre-enclosures.
Tim adds: Indeed, we've been over this before. Such property rights can be a result of spontaneous order, as you point out. But property rights there must be.
Posted by: Peter Risdon | Apr 5, 2007 10:02:50 AM
