From The Conversable Economist:
Fisheries are a standard example for economists of the "tragedy of the
commons." For any individual fisherman, it makes sense to catch as many
fish as possible. However, if all fishermen act in this way and if the
number of fishermen grows substantially over time, the underlying common
resource can become depleted and unable to renew itself. In fact, this
scenario has actually taken place with the world's natural fisheries,
where production peaked a couple of decades ago and has been stagnant or
declining since then.
The just-published OECD Review of Fisheries: Policy and Summary Statistics 2017 notes:
"Production of wild-caught fish in OECD countries is considerably below
its peak in the late 1980s and continues to decline."
There are two ways out of this box. One way is to figure out a method of
limiting what fishermen catch, which would over time allow natural
fishing stocks to rebuild so that the total catch could be greater in
the medium- and long-run. I've written about proposals and analysis
along these lines in
"Saving Global Fisheries with Property Rights" (April 12, 2016) and"More Fish Through Less Fishing" (May
10, 2017). The obvious difficulty is while would be in the broad
interest of a fishing industry to have limits on what can be caught, so
that the resource is preserved, the practical issues of determining who
should be allowed to catch how much and enforcing such decisions can be
difficult.
The other approach is to have the fish-production migrate away from wild
catch, and move toward "aquaculture," in which a certain body of water
is no longer a common resource, but instead is owned by a fish producer.
Aquaculture appears to be on is way to surpassing natural catch. As the
OECD report notes:
"Global aquaculture production already exceeds the volume of catch from
wild fisheries, if aquatic plants are included. Annual average
aquaculture growth in OECD countries has accelerated and now averages
2.1% per year. Globally, it is even more rapid, at 6% per year.
Moreover, average prices of aquaculture products are increasing ..."
Most of the OECD report is a point-by-point overview of what is
happening in individual countries. There is lots of "reviewing and
revising," and "advancing reforms" and "latest major policy
developments." But at least to me, it's revealing that "Countries are
also working actively to promote the sustainable development of
aquaculture, which is seen as the primary source of future growth in
fish production." This emphasis suggests that the process of rebuilding
natural stocks of fish has a long way to go....MORE
