A decade of ITQ-management in Icelandic fisheries: consolidation without consensus

Icelandic fisheries have been managed by individual transferable quotas (ITQs) for a decade but there is still no consensus about the quota issue. Distributional effects of ITQs, in terms of income distribution between owner and crew, and the vulnerability of fisheries communities short of quota, have been in the centre of the debate.The author discusses changes in stakeholder involvement in policy-making, conflicts of interest and legal disputes linked to the ITQ-system. By way of conclusion, some options for resolving conflicts and reaching consensus on the fisheries management issue are discussed.     

A rejoinder to E. Pinkerton et al., the elephant in the room: The hidden costs of leasing individual transferable fishing quotas

The purpose of this rejoinder is to respond to and question the many assertions made by Pinkerton et al. in the recently published Marine Policy article entitled: “The elephant in the room: The hidden costs of leasing individual transferable fishing quotas”. Particular attention is paid to the assertion that 79% of the British Columbia Pacific halibut TAC is being leased out by “armchair fishermen”. The rejoinder also discusses how ITQs, when used with other fishery management tools, such as catch monitoring, creates incentives that align more closely the fishermen harvesting behaviour and practices with the objectives of the resource manager.     

Using individual transferable quotas (ITQs) to achieve social policy objectives: A proposed intervention

ITQs offer environmental and economic benefits, including better conservation of a fish stock and greater profitability for fishers. With some limitations, they achieve fairly good alignment between the profit incentive and stewardship objectives. Nevertheless, critics have objected to ITQ schemes because of such factors as the “armchair fishing” phenomenon, unfairness to the public (the owner of the fish), economic and social damage to remote communities, and increased concentration within the fishery. Economists generally dismiss these as distributional issues rather than matters of efficiency or economics, but economic principles are clearly not the only factors that may require attention or action from a government or regulator. This paper proposes an intervention that addresses these concerns within the context of an ITQ scheme. The intervention does not reduce the permanence or values of ITQs, and therefore retains the benefits that ITQs are designed to deliver. Nevertheless, the intervention addresses the criticisms identified above. Modifications of the intervention may enable additional goals and benefits to be achieved as well.     

The cost-benefit ledger of quota leasing

Bruce Turris recently presented an analysis of the expenses and earnings of British Columbia fishermen who lease halibut quota (ITQs). The BC Longline Fishermen's Association, which represents active halibut fishermen has quite a different analysis of these costs and benefits, and also takes issue with Turris’ analysis of the state of the fishery in general under quotas.     

Social and economic consequences of 40 years of Dutch quota management

The Netherlands was one of the first nations to introduce ITQs in their fisheries to manage national yearly Total Allowable Catches (TACs). These ITQs have gradually developed from an individual quota system in 1976 to an ITQ system in the 1980s. In 1993 the system was reformed into a co-management system. In this paper it is argued that many of the usual negative socio-economic consequences of ITQs mentioned in the literature have been largely absent, due to the embeddedness of ITQs in co-management arrangements. However, cracks have appeared lately in this combined management system, allowing an identification of its vulnerabilities. These findings show that the social and economic structure of Dutch fisheries is changing from a rather cooperative to a more competitive and exclusive system, more like conventional ITQs.     

Lesser-known consequences of managing marine fisheries using individual transferable quotas

Managing marine fisheries using output controls in the form of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) can be an attractive alternative to more traditional input controls. There are now a number of examples of where ITQ-managed fisheries have been able to reduce the impact of the major management problems in global fisheries, namely, gross over-capitalisation and effort. However, ITQs are not the perfect management tool and one of the lesser known consequences of ITQ-managed fisheries where ITQs consist of a harvest right is the implicit relationship between ITQ property rights and rights of access to the fishing grounds. This implicit spatial right to the grounds can provide obstacles in the way of allocating water-space within fishing grounds for alternative uses such as marine-protected areas, large-scale aquaculture, and wind farms. These lesser-known consequences of ITQ-managed fisheries are discussed here.     

Private property and public interest in fisheries management: the Tasmanian rock lobster fishery

In 1998 a management system based on individual transferable quota (ITQ) was introduced in the Tasmanian rock lobster fishery. This marked the continuation of a management trend that has favoured economic efficiency at the cost of reduced employment and greater restrictions on access to the fishery. The authors discuss management trends in the fishery in the context of Tasmania's history, and social and political characteristics, which it is argued, have shaped development of Tasmania's resource management culture. Implications for social equality, economic well-being and environmental sustainability are discussed. In conclusion the difficulty of reforming policy that has been shaped by vested interests and which establishes rent-seeking activity is considered.     

Private rights,public benefits: Industry-driven seabed protection

New Zealand has a large exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that contains a variety of marine habitats and commercially-important species. The commercial fishing industry operating within New Zealand's EEZ is of significant value to the economy and fisheries resources are managed through the extensive use of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). One of the benefits of ITQs has been to better align some of the private incentives of quota owners with the public interest. These incentives contributed to an initiative proposed by the fishing industry to close large areas of New Zealand's EEZ to protect the seabed from trawling. These closed areas are termed benthic protection areas (BPAs) and protect the benthic biodiversity of about 1.1 million square kilometres of seabed—approximately 30% of New Zealand's EEZ. A significant proportion of New Zealand's known seamounts and active hydrothermal vents are protected by these closed areas. We describe and discuss the criteria used to select BPAs and some of the criticism of this marine protection initiative. We argue that the assignment of strong property rights in fishing resources was an important precondition to an industry initiative that has a significant public benefit. Where private and public interests are well aligned, government can adopt an enabling and facilitation role, ceding direct control of processes in order to get the results the align with the public interest.     

Demand-side fishery management: integrating two forms of input control

A fishery management approach is presented which combines (1) a buyback of fishing vessels, and (2) a management tax or fee on seafood going to market. Tax rate by species is set proportional to the extent of overexploitation. Tax revenue is used for several purposes, including a buyback of licenses at free-market price. Advantages and disadvantages of this policy are discussed, with specific comparison to individual transferable quotas (ITQs). This regulatory policy offers advantages (1) for multispecies fisheries, (2) with ecosystem fishery management, (3) where self-funded financing for license buyback is needed, and in place of or together with ITQs (4) where allocation, discarding and highgrading, quota setting, or enforcement of ITQs is problematic.     

Individual transferable quotas in Argentina: Policy and performance

The purpose of the article is to describe the Argentine ITQ system during the early years after the initial allocation in 2009 and introduce the Argentine case in the discussion on ITQs. This paper has been elaborated based on statistical information derived from fleet and catch data of the Fishing Log System of the Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Acquaculture and Management Reports on the Individual Transferable Quotas regime. The implementation of the Argentine ITQs regime took into account issues learned from other countries and from the theoretical debate about the pros and cons of the ITQ system. The Argentine ITQ regime introduced enough flexibility to dismiss the disadvantages of this system pointed out in other international experiences.     

Unreported bycatch in the New Zealand West Coast South Island hoki fishery

There are recognised benefits to managing fisheries by individual transferable quotas (ITQs), but ITQs may increase incentives to discard fish.     

Ignoring market failure in quota leasing?

This short communication is, in part, a response to the Bruce Turris' rejoinder (Marine Policy…2010) to Pinkerton et al., The elephant in the room: The hidden costs of leasing individual transferable fishing quotas (Marine Policy, July 2009). In responding to this article on the unacknowledged problems of unregulated and even unrecorded leasing of individual transferable fishing quotas (ITQs), Turris illustrated the point of the original article well by minimizing the status of leasing as a major influence leading to problems with the fishery: an elephant in the room. Turris focused instead on relatively small and less relevant details, misrepresented the argument, and largely ignored or skirted our discussion of the absent structural conditions important for open competition and efficient outcomes. This response addresses several of his concerns, elaborates on some of the initial points in the original article and contributes some new ones.     

Transferable quotas,efficiency and crew ownership in Whalsay,Shetland

The resource economic theory tells us that individual transferable quotas (ITQs) improve efficiency in the fishing industry by removing the least efficient actors from a fishery and allowing ownership to concentrate in the hands of the most efficient operators. Assertions about the nature of this allocative efficiency are, however, often based on purely theoretical assumptions. This paper presents a case study of the efficient operators remaining in the UK pelagic fishing fleet. After over 30 years of rights-based management (RBM) and 12 years of ITQs, the UK pelagic fleet numbers only 31 large-scale boats. Seven of these operate from the island of Whalsay in Shetland, which, with a population of approximately 1000 people (0.000016% of the population of the UK), is entitled to land around 22% of the UK pelagic catch. A key characteristic of the economically efficient Whalsay fleet is a crew ownership structure. This is now under threat from the long-term dynamics of the UK's ITQ system, as the high price of quota prevents the renewal of the fishery through new entrants. In the majority of global fisheries, where vessel ownership structures do not follow an assumed economic norm, fully marketised transferable rights may not be the most efficient method of management.     

Privatization,financialization and ocean grabbing in New Brunswick herring fisheries and salmon aquaculture

The growing literature on individual transferable quotas (ITQs) and on intensive salmon aquaculture and its negative impacts on the environment and other users of related marine space has been little connected to the developing literature on financialization and to the literature on ocean grabbing within fisheries. This paper seeks to address this gap through a case study of the recent history of herring fisheries and intensive aquaculture in New Brunswick, Canada, exploring how specific neoliberal processes – including privatization and marketization (in herring fleet ITQs and aquaculture lease systems), (re)regulation, financialization and globalization – have interacted to support the reshaping of regional fisheries from mixed small-scale, family-based, petty commodity fisheries towards vertically-integrated, corporate, financialized fisheries characterized by ocean grabbing.     

Licence Banks as a tool to mitigate corporate control of fisheries: A British Columbia groundfish example

This paper provides an example of how one group of fishermen, operating in an ITQ fishery in British Columbia, Canada, used a licence bank to attempt to mitigate the negative consequences of ITQs. After ten years in operation, the licence bank is self-sustaining and has realized modest and limited success. The authors identify a number of lessons learned from the experience, as well as highlight the opportunities that licence banks offer as an alternative mechanism to redress the negative consequences of ITQs.     

Ex ante evaluation of the costs and benefits of individual transferable quotas: A case-study of seven Australian commonwealth fisheries

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) have been introduced in a number of different countries, including Australia. Using seven Australian commonwealth fisheries the paper undertakes an ex ante cost–benefit analysis whether to introduce ITQs into these fisheries. The analysis uses five cost–benefit criteria, and in particular the gross value of production (GVP), to evaluate whether ITQs should be introduced or not. For fisheries where the net benefits do not currently justify ITQs, a pathway is provided to improve management outcomes with the use of individual transferable efforts units (ITEs).     

Tangled lines in New Zealand's quota management system: The process of including recreational fisheries

This article uses New Zealand as a case study of processes relating to the inclusion of recreational fisheries in modern fisheries management systems based on Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). The New Zealand case highlights challenges governments often meet when attempting to integrate the recreational sector into fisheries management, including: (a) resistance to restrictions on what has historically been free-of-charge public access to fish for recreational purposes and (b) the fragmented character of the recreational sector, which makes it difficult to have recreational interests attend to their management role and responsibilities.     

Lease quota fishing in a changing rock lobster industry

The Tasmanian rock lobster industry has been managed by Individually Transferable Quotas (ITQs) and several input control measures since 1998. In this study, nine years of rock lobster fishing business data were used to categorise the catch and quota ownership traits and examine the response to the introduction of ITQ management. More specifically the study investigates how profit drivers moderated industry structure change.     

Thirty years after privatization: A survey of Icelandic small-boat fishermen

Iceland's nationwide privatized Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) system is over thirty years old but remains a topic of public and political debate, particularly because of the continued effects on small-scale fisheries. A national survey of small-boat fishermen was distributed to: (1) identify major defining characteristics of participants in ITQ and non-ITQ fisheries, (2) document and examine differences in satisfaction with fisheries management, and (3) evaluate the existing options for newcomers to participate in small-boat fisheries. Survey results indicate that Icelandic small-boat fishermen are engaged in multiple management systems within a wide range of boat sizes. Those who held quota were more satisfied with the current ITQ system compared to those who did not hold quota; however, nearly all fishermen were still critical of fisheries management in Iceland and the two major non-ITQ options of lumpfish and coastal fishing were not perceived to offer significant opportunity for entry-level fishermen. Dissatisfaction stemmed from the lack of decision-making power, a distrust of scientific advice, and the perception that the ITQ system did not serve the purpose of protecting fisheries resources, but was rather oriented only toward economic goals. The dynamic nature of Icelandic small-boat fishing livelihoods and the pervasive negative attitudes thirty years after ITQ implementation demonstrate the need for culturally appropriate and equitable fisheries management schemes where success is measured in social as well as economic and biological terms.