Why fisheries management fails: treating symptoms rather than the cause
BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, 78(3): 529–546, 2006
529Bulletin of Marine Science
© 2006 Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
of the University of Miami
MOTE SYMPOSIUM INVITED PAPER
WHY FISHERIES MANAGEMENT FAILS: TREATING
SYMPTOMS RATHER THAN THE CAUSE
James E. Wilen
ABSTRACT
Most fisheries management controls fishing mortality directly with top-down
measures like time and area closures and gear restrictions. Decisions about these
measures take place in adversarial, politically charged arenas. Scientists criticize
conventional methods, mostly arguing for more draconian applications of the same
tools. Economists also criticize them, but because they believe such methods focus
on the symptom rather than the cause of problems. From the perspective of econo-
mists, the race to fish, the drive to increase fishing power, and the perversion of the
politics of the management process are all driven by the insecurity of access faced
y fishermen under most systems. Economists believe that fishermen’s incentives
are distorted by insecure harvest privileges, leading them to compete wastefully
with each other and with managers for fish. Alternatives they recommend include
“rights-based” harvest privileges. Although the shortcomings of these institutions
have been argued about for over two decades, enough evidence has accumulated
for a focus on consequences rather than speculation. Virtually all such experience
shows that rights-based management institutions alter incentives in ways favorable
to conservation and stewardship. An important inducement for behavioral changes
is the wealth that is capitalized into the values of permits in rights-based systems.
As in many areas of public policy, little consensus has emerged on how to tackle
the “fisheries problem.” The range of policy suggestions advocated by different con-
stituents has
oadened over the last two decades, and passionate support has e
ed
and flowed for both old and new solutions (Caddy, 1999; Ostrom, 1999; Hilborn et
al., 2003; Pauly et al., 2003, Smith and Link, XXXXXXXXXXIn this arena of disagreement over
means and ends, fisheries management is conducted in a political process that reacts
to the lack of scientific consensus by adapting slowly. In the minds of many, this
paralyzed political process has
ought us to the edge of a precipice where the entire
global marine ecosystem is in jeopardy. Why is disagreement so great over what to do
with the world’s fisheries? I believe that the lack of consensus is due to lack of agree-
ment about the fundamental cause of the problem.
Here, I discuss the way economists characterize the root cause of modern fisher-
ies problems. Economists agree on this characterization, if not always on the way to
fix the problem. One of my main points is that, in contrast, fisheries science has not
come to a consensus over the cause of the problem and in fact, more often than not,
focuses on its symptoms instead. The role of fisheries science in the management
process is therefore chaotic, constantly shifting and without consistent recommen-
dations over what must be done or agreement on the range of options that address
the problem. Repeated calls over the past decade for fundamental paradigm shifts
are, I would argue, symptomatic of a science in turmoil.
For the most part, fisheries scientists view the root cause of fisheries problems as
ad behavior on the part of user groups. For example, according to one of the most
widely cited critiques of conventional management methods (Ludwig et al., 1993),
“shortsightedness and greed of humans underlie difficulties in management of re-
sources” and “wealth or the prospect of wealth generates political and social power
BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, VOL. 78, NO. 3, XXXXXXXXXX
that is used to promote unlimited exploitation of resources.” The question of why
user groups behave badly is not raised by many fisheries scientists; resource users
are assumed to be “greedy” and “shortsighted” as a natural condition. In this view of
the world, if the objective of management is sustainable fisheries, the aim of policy
must be to control and restrain the immutable bad behavior of users. As a leading
fisheries-management text summarizes the task, “management authorities must de-
sign, justify (politically), and administer (enforce) a collection of restraints on fishing
activity” (Hilborn and Walters, XXXXXXXXXXImportantly, under this view, management is
fundamentally an adversarial process wherein the natural instincts of user groups
must be policed by another group for the greater good of society. This approach leads,
quite satisfyingly, to a good-guys versus bad-guys view of the fisheries management
problem.
As a result, the policy recommendations that have gained consensus among fisher-
ies scientists are aimed at controlling fishing mortality directly and with top-down
measures like time and area closures and gear restrictions. But despite the promi-
nence of fisheries scientists in most regulatory processes, these same scientists have
een among the most vocal critics of conventional regulatory methods. Such criti-
cism argues not that prevailing top-down fishing effort reduction measures have
een misguided but that they have not been draconian enough to ensure stock safety.
Failure is often attributed to a political process that does not listen to scientists or
that is captured by those out to promote unlimited exploitation of resources or to the
difficulty of conducting science that is robust enough to set management goals and
targets objectively (Ludwig et al., 1993).
Economists have also criticized conventional methods, but because they believe
that conventional “end-of-pipe” control methods are fundamentally misguided and
focus on symptoms rather than the cause of fisheries management problems. For
economists, the more fundamental question is why do user groups behave so badly
that external “enforcement” is necessary? After all, we leave many other arenas of
esource-use decisions up to individual choice. What about fishing leads fishermen
to act seemingly without foresight? If we can answer that question, we can attack the
cause of the problem rather than the symptoms.
Economists believe that they understand the source of bad behavior in fisheries.
At heart, the problem is not inherent in fishermen as individuals but is induced by
the governance systems they are forced to operate within. In particular, fishermen’s
fundamental decision-making incentives are distorted by insecure harvest privileges
(often called property rights) so that they are led to compete wastefully with each
other, and with managers, for increased quantities of fish. Insecure harvest privi-
leges, in turn, are a historical artifact of the peculiar institutions within which fisher-
men and other user groups operate in most modern fisheries.
These two fundamentally different perspectives are partially responsible for the
different sets of policy recommendations promoted by fisheries scientists on the one
hand and by fisheries economists on the other (Fig. 1). Although economists have
come to speak with a single voice on the fisheries problem within the economics
discipline, a reading of fisheries science policy discussions makes clear that they have
generally failed to communicate the importance of the argument to others. In what
follows, I discuss a simple thought experiment intended to make clear that secure
access privileges are critical determinants of behavior and why fisheries policy must
address property-rights institutions to solve the fisheries problem. Economists be-
WILEN: WHY MANAGEMENT FAILS 531
lieve that symptoms-focused fisheries policies will continue to generate the legacy of
difficulties commonly summarized as “the fisheries problem” and that, until policies
tackle the root cause of the problem, these difficulties will only get worse.
Farming with and Without Secure Access Rights—A Parable
A simple thought experiment that clarifies these points is to imagine what farm-
ing would look like if farmers were forced to operate under the same governance
institutions under which fisheries typically operate. Consider a hypothetical agri-
cultural area in which the highest-valued use of the farmland is to produce corn for
the fresh table market. Assume that each farm can earn $500 per acre in revenues at
a yearly variable input cost of $200 per acre. Variable input costs are divided equally
into expenses for a tractor ($100/acre) and for all other inputs ($100/acre), including
a fair wage for the farme
owner’s time in on-farm work and management. At this
hypothetically most efficient configuration of inputs, the net profits from farming
Figure 1. Two perspectives on the fisheries problem, that of fisheries science and that of fisheries
economics.
BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, VOL. 78, NO. 3, XXXXXXXXXX
would be $300 per acre. This surplus of value over all costs can be thought of as the
eturn to the productive capacity of the land itself. In a competitive market for farm-
land, potential renters for farmland would bid the rental value of land up to $300 per
acre. In addition, potential buyers of farmland would bid land sale prices up to levels
eflecting the expected present value of the flow of these surplus returns. In most
situations, land prices are bid up to some multiple of cash rents, say 10 or 12 times
average annual rents. Land would thus transact in this hypothetical world at prices
of $3000–3600 per acre. The manner in which expected flows of future rents are
embedded in land values is called “capitalization” of expected rents. Capitalization of
land rents into land prices is similar to the manner in which the stock market prices
stocks at multiples of earnings or dividends (summarized in price/earnings ratios)
and to that in which sale prices for limited-entry permits are multiples of lease prices
(Karpoff, 1984; Huppert et al., 1996).
Farming as we know it operates under a legal system of property rights that con-
veys secure and enforceable title to land. This security guarantees that a farmer has
exclusive access to, and control over, his land resources. With secure access privileges
guaranteed by law, a farmer does not need to spend resources to keep outsiders from
appropriating the productive capacity of his land. Under secure title, an incentive
continually operates to experiment with methods of improving land productivity be-
cause successful innovations generate more net profits, which accrue directly to the
farme
land owners as profit. Farmers do not overexploit the productive capacity of
their land because the land not only produces a flow of profits (like dividends) but is
also part of the farmer’s wealth (like equities). Actions that generate short-term gains
at the expense of the land’s productivity therefore generate offsetting losses in the
value of the farmer’s land. Even farmers contemplating retirement cannot afford to
degrade their land because they can reap the benefits of careful stewardship when it
is sold. Importantly, another continually operating incentive is to make investments
that increase the permanent productivity of