Cover Story
Fisheries Forum
The Political Economy of Natural Resource Uses:
Lessons for Fisheries Reform
Mountain Sky Guest Ranch,
Emigrant MT
May 7–10, 2009
"The Political Economy of Natural Resource Use: Lessons for Fisheries Reform" is the topic of a forum hosted by the Property & Environment
Research Center (PERC) under the direction of Don Leal, with the support of the World Bank’s sustainable fisheries program (PROFISH).
The purpose of the forum is to bring together a group of two dozen distinguished academics and practitioners to focus on a broader
understanding of the institutional foundations necessary to promote efficient resource use and long-term economic growth.
Background
The world's ocean fisheries are in crisis because of the ongoing failure to manage the economic wealth inherent in a naturally productive resource.
The World Bank study "Sunken Billions" estimates that the world's fisheries squander an estimated $50 billion a year from overfishing because
of poor governance in managed fisheries as well as illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing.
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April 14, 2010
Don Leal speaks on role of property rights in sustainable fisheries
Donald Leal, Director of Research and Senior Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), spoke at the University
of South Florida's Annual Environmental Economics Policy Forum in April. The forum was held at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota
and focused on sustainable fishery efforts both past and present. In addition to Leal, three representatives from Mote presented
their views. According to Leal, the status of fishery resources in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere in the United States
and around the world shows the failure of command and control fishery management practices to prevent overfishing
and improve the economic performance of the fisheries. "There is mounting evidence of the need to replace command
and control regulated fisheries with rights based management," says Leal. Property rights can play a vital role
in developing sustainable fisheries through such mechanisms as individual fishing quotas and other types of quota
or limit options.
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What's Happening
National Fisherman Journal
April 2009
May I Quota You?
Management Regime shift
At the end of 2008, three years after Gulf of Mexico fishermen approved individual fishing quotas for red snapper,
they ok'd a grouper fish IFQ program by a similar, overwhelming margin, and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery
Management Council has now approved it.
Nonindividualistic fishing quotas are still hotly debated, and plenty of fishermen still favor open access, but
fishery management in the Gulf of mexico appears to be on a new heading.
Well-positioned IFQ advocates, several of whom are management council advisory panel members, are hoping to bring
the entire reef fish complex under individual quota, and political momentum appears to favor them.
The council has, in fact, voted to explore a comprehensive
reef fish IFQ, by some accounts the first effort of its kind anywhere.
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