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Save the oceans, sell the fisheries

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A new science report says the world's fisheries are on track to collapse by 2050. Great doomsday scenarios are a dime a dozen these days. In this case, though, there are good reasons to suspect the world's oceans could be heading for some kind of crisis, if not total collapse. The oceans, after all, are under the protection of national governments and various United Nations-like laws and agreements, filled with wordy commitments and grand statements of principle. The common features of all these official government attempts to save the oceans and fishing are neglect, failure, depletion and growing risks.

What the oceans don't have is any form of property rights and ownership regimes to actually do the job. That leaves ocean resources in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. These are same people, one might add, who want to reach out and take control of the world's atmosphere.

The new Science magazine study on the oceans, by a research team headed by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, seems like a reasonable attempt to get some idea of how oceans are bearing up under the current state-managed governance structures. You don't have to accept every element of the study to appreciate that the current regimes might not be working.

The study looked at experiments, observations and data to determine whether declines in biodiversity caused overall deterioration of marine production. Damage to local ocean environments brought on by over-fishing and other practices appears to lead to elimination of some species that in turn impairs the ability of marine systems to produce fish. If trends continue, the oceans could be depleted of fish by 2050.

If the oceans were a functioning market protected by property rights, projections of long-term doom could be easily dismissed. When valuable resources are threatened with ruin under current practices, the owners of those resources would be the first actors in avoiding disaster. Prices would play a role, something that doesn't figure much in ocean fishing today.

In today's ocean governance regimes, most fishing is either a giant free-for-all or subject to national government programs and planning models. Most of the study focuses on areas that are within the traditional 200-mile national zones that surround the world's nations.

The study, moreover, is more than hopeful that the damage done so far can be reversed. Marine reserves can be regenerated. The question is how. Mr. Worms is the first to admit that he does not know all the economic answers. "What we're trying to do here is show people there's a very clear trend and a consistent pattern that shows up in all the data. That provides society with the information to base decisions on. What exactly is to be done? I cannot tell people exactly what to do. I can speculate, but it's not something I have much expertise in talking about."

In an interview, Mr. Worms said he is aware of experiments with ocean fishing property rights, in New Zealand and elsewhere, which he understands have been successful. He has another story, though, of a German property-rights plan that went awry when local mussel fishermen were allocated quota rights that they could sell. They apparently all sold to a fishing conglomerate that wiped out the resource. As a result, he favours preserving local control and ownership limits that keep the resource in the hands of small-scale operators.

But these are details, or the beginnings of experiments and trials, aimed at bringing property rights discipline to fishing and ocean management. New Zealand's Individual Transferable Quota system is a program that reputedly works well. Donald Leal, author of Fencing the Fishery: A Primer on Ending the Race for Fish, sees the quota ownership as the beginning of an essential movement to bring private rights and markets to fishing. Many issues need to be resolved. "Should the fish rights be auctioned to the highest bidder? How do new entrants get into the fishery?"

While property-rights fisheries are spreading all over the world, a lot of conceptual work still needs to be done. Unfortunately, perhaps, the major thrust of activists in this area appears aimed at keeping the current government-directed governance system, but reshaping and redirecting it to achieve better results. Robert Rangeley, WWF-Canada's marine Atlantic program director, wants to get governments -- which now claim ownership of the oceans and fishery -- to introduce new structures and systems, bring ownership-type thinking to fishing and more modern scientific practices.

Reasons for optimism are few, however. Canada is certainly no model. "Canada has made some wonderful commitments," says Mr. Rangeley, "but Canada is moving slowly and falling behind other nations." The cod-fishery fiasco is a perfect example. It collapsed in 1992, and today there is still no recovery plan in place.

Save the oceans, sell the fishery. Long term, it's hard to see how the current system of national and international state control will ever succeed. Clear property rights, established and enforced with armed police, are likely to work better than what we have today. But it will take time.

For a useful primer on property rights for fishing, see the latest issue of Ideas Matter, published this fall by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (www.aims.ca/aimslibrary.asp?ft=1&id=1484). The group also has copies of Fencing the Fishery.