Weakly Discourse

The Economist has an interesting piece on a recent published article examining the efficacy of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). Considering that the majority of the world’s fish stocks are being fished to capactiy, with a quarter either depeleted or in danger of collapsing, it is rather evident some change in terms of sustainability will need to be applied to prevent the potential for these fish stocks from collapsing much like the situation that occurred off the Newfoundland Coast. I do find the idea of ITQs innovative, as they’re attempting to solve this issue through a way in which seems to encourage fisherman to spend more time fishing rather than rushing out in a competition to fill their quota right away.

One of the issues though that I’m concerned about is the relative newness of ITQs and thus a lack of long-term study on them (notwithstanding this newest study). As mentioned, there are 121 ITQs in operation out of the 10,000+ fisheries, so we only have a small number of cases with which to see how they operate in practice. And from some accounts we end up with situations such as the following:

In 2002 a group of Chignik fishermen petitioned the Alaska Board of Fisheries to form a cooperative, into which 77 of the 100 permit holders elected. The remaining 23 fishermen maintained their independent status…The cooperative structured its harvest and payoffs as follows: 22 of the 77 members were paid to catch the coop’s entire quota, while 55 did not fish but shared in the revenues from catch according to a predetermined formula.

So while sustainability is increased, it seems to cause an environment in which larger groups have much easier access to these ITQs than individuals operating by themselves (In the case above, though, the Alaskan court deemed this situation illegal, which is a plus for oversight). Now, this may be exactly what it’s intended to do, as this report mentions at one point, that by making it more harder for new entrants, you are effectively addressing “overcapitalization” which plagues fisheries without ITQs. Still, there is still the potential that those with more access to the ability to buy ITQs (namely, large corporations) could begin dominating how fishing takes place under ITQ situations. Though, that could be resolved through modifying the ITQs (“Many early problems with ITQs are attributable to program design and may not be inherent problems with the concept of ITQ management,” same report) in ways in which to more adequately spread around the availability of ITQs.

It seems promising in its novelty and hopefully more of these will be started to more adequately get a picture on their long term effects on sustainable fishing.