A Bargain for Tuna: Coaseian Solutions to Bigeye Bycatch

Suggested Bibliographic Reference: Challenging New Frontiers in the Global Seafood Sector: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, July 11-15, 2016. Compiled by Stefani J. Evers and Ann L. Shriver. International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET), Corvallis, 2016.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.Many of the world’s most valuable fisheries involve highly migratory stocks that cross national jurisdictions. These same fisheries face severe threats from direct overfishing or excessive bycatch. Traditional input and/or output controls generally have been costly and ineffective. Incentive-based programs that provide tradable shares in an annual total allowable catch or tradable credits acquired by reduced bycatch harvests are attractive alternatives. These rely on Coasean exchange, but implementing them is costly due to fleet heterogeneity—flag country, target species, vessel size, technology; monitoring; new entry; and importantly, participation by countries whose exclusive economic zones (EEZs) are involved. Country leaders engage in international collaboration to manage fish stocks when it is in the interests of key constituents to do so. Although there may be worldwide benefits from fishery stock conservation, constituents in key countries may be made worse off from reduced access, harvest and processing levels, and license revenues. These constituents and politicians who represent them may view international efforts as imposing disproportionate burden. Traditional “polluter pays” rules focus on restricting fishers. “Beneficiary pays rules,” however, emphasize payments from significant beneficiaries (International Organizations, NGOs, major fishing nations, major consuming nations), to elicit the cooperation of essential parties through compensation. Such payments can change perceptions within key countries to view international efforts as delivering proportionate benefits and costs. Such a distribution has been shown in the literature as a precondition for successful collective action in many settings. Within EEZs design can then turn to effective incentive-based schemes to protect stocks