Enhancing the governance of tropical fisheries at a large spatial scale: conceptual approaches, case studies and financing considerations in West Africa and the Western and Central Pacific Ocean

Date
2016
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University of Delaware
Abstract
Approximately 29 percent of the ocean’s fish stocks that have been assessed are considered as ‘overfished’, with levels increasing the most in tropical waters which often border developing countries. Following over two decades of international agreement that overfishing is a global environmental problem, on September 25, 2015 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution setting 17 ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ that included a commitment to end overfishing by 2020. Global models have suggested that achieving this target will require a significant reduction in the amount of fishing effort, with unknown costs to states or in aggregate to the international community. Acknowledging that there are many determinants of human fishing behavior, this dissertation adopts an institutions perspective on fisheries, to focus on governance as one of the key (and most feasible) variables that can be changed in order to reduce current levels of overfishing. Governance is defined as a systemic concept relating to the exercise of control or influence over fishing activity by political, economic and social institutions, and the organizations emerging from them and articulating policies to implement or change them or establish new rules. Given the diversity of different types of fisheries, any changes or reforms to governance in order to reduce overfishing will be context-specific and only likely to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) in the aggregate. As such, empirical analysis can be useful to understand the types of governance reforms that could support progress in different contexts and at different scales, and their potential costs. Although a wide body of literature exists on governance reform efforts at the level of specific fisheries, and a growing body on national-scale reforms in developed countries with temperate waters, relatively few cases have been documented of national or large-scale fisheries governance reforms in tropical developing countries, where the trends in overfishing are growing. This dissertation aims to contribute conceptual tools that could be used to expand the body of empirical analysis of fisheries governance reforms in tropical developing countries at a national or large spatial scale, and answer the following questions: (i) what is the conceptual framework that would be needed to support greater empirical analysis of fisheries governance reforms in tropical developing countries at national or large spatial scales, and (ii) what conclusions can be drawn from a first application of this framework to a relatively new body of experience in tropical fisheries governance reforms, based on the recent portfolio of investments by the World Bank? To answer this question, a conceptual framework for ocean fisheries governance reform has been developed based on a literature review, as a common lens by which to assess changes in different cases and contexts, and the potential costs. This lens has been applied to the World Bank’s portfolio of public investments over the last 10 years, which provides a relatively unique body of data on developing country large-scale reform efforts, including financial cost data. Within this dataset, two case studies from different types of fisheries and geographies are described in detailed, one coastal in West Africa, the other with small islands in the western Pacific. Analysis of the World Bank’s portfolio showed several common types of fisheries governance reforms supported with varying degrees of success in contributing towards reducing or preventing overfishing, including establishment of co-governance partnerships between the state and resource users to create (or in some cases return) management rights for the latter over coastal and multi-species sedentary fisheries; introduction of effort and catch rights in industrialized fisheries; and enhanced efforts of state agencies to support reforms, notably to increase compliance with existing rules. The financial costs, i.e. those costs incurred by states, of reforms in the cases was on the order of $245 million total, across 11 countries and one regional agency (i.e. the regional effort in the SWIOFP), over a period of 5 years maximum. The financial costs of policy formulation and reform were relatively small across the cases, though this was often a relatively lengthy time process, while the majority of the costs were incurred in developing and enacting rule changes or new rules—generally the transaction costs of establishing and supporting community/stakeholder management rights in co-governance partnerships, and also the costs of enhancing operations of state organizations charged with supporting harvest rules, such as monitoring and surveillance to enhance compliance—essentially the enforcement costs. In terms of the economic costs of the reform, foregone production and resource rent did not happen at a large scale in West Africa, where effort reductions were achieved by reducing illegal fishing effort and the industrial vessel buy-back in Senegal never occurred. In the Pacific Islands, the introduction of reforms in the purse seine fishery prior to overfishing, offered the potential to avoid effort reductions and foregone rent, in favor of a cap or limit. More broadly, the scale of financing for reform—some $245 million in 11 countries over 5 years—is both significant and yet a fraction of the ocean fisheries in many of these countries: representing seven districts in eastern Indonesia, four out of nine Pacific Island Countries, 10 percent of the EEZ in Tanzania, just under 20 pilot sites for coastal sedentary fishery systems in four countries of West Africa, etc. The duration of reform has been a minimum of five years in these cases, with many not considered complete after this period. Given the timeframe, and the mixed picture of success (as well as lack of data) in the cases examined, a note of caution may be warranted as to the scale of reform efforts needed in tropical ocean fishery systems in order to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target. Both significant time horizons and some $245 million in external financing resources were needed in order to achieve globally modest reductions in fishing effort, though prevention of overfishing in the Western and Central Pacific purse seine fishery system seems likely to be more cost-effective. Even if much more external financing became available, in the cases reviewed the entry points and characteristics of reform suggest a process of years. While care must be taken in extrapolating from case studies, this research suggests that at the current rate the Sustainable Development Goal target seems unlikely to be met. Greater empirical research to understand the types of large-scale fisheries governance reforms that have led to reductions in overfishing in different developing country contexts, notably in the tropics, and the economic costs and benefits of these reforms, are urgently needed. This could lead to more causal research on the amount of new investment in ocean fisheries governance reform needed to end overfishing and meet the Sustainable Development Goal.
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