Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (The Pearson Series in Economics) by Thomas H. Tietenberg & Lynne Lewis

Author:Thomas H. Tietenberg & Lynne Lewis [Tietenberg, Thomas H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781315523941
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-03-03T23:00:00+00:00

ITQs or TURFs? Species, Space, or Both?

DEBATE 12.1

ITQs and TURFs can improve economic efficiency and help protect fisheries from overexploitation. Is one management method better than another? Can they be usefully combined?

Species-based ITQs have proven very popular and they can, in theory, create efficient harveting and conservation incentives. However, in practice enforcement can be challenging and they suffer from several externalities. Some of the most prominent externalties, including gear impacts on ecosystems, spatial externalities and cross-species interactions, might actually be increased by ITQs. Let’s see how.

Typically the total allowable catch (TAC) is divided amongst several, perhaps numerous, owners. Although they do not compete over the size of their catch (since that is fixed by their catch share), they do still compete over the timing of that catch. Timing might matter a great deal when the most productive harvesting periods (in terms of reducing the private effort required per unit catch) turn out to be precisely the periods that impose the largest external costs (say by increasing the likelihood of bycatch or negatively impacting the juvenile stock). As such, they help solve one problem (assuring a sustainable total catch), while creating another (encouraging a harvest timing that increases external costs).

The Coase theorem (Chapter 2) suggests that these ownership rights should, in principle, create incentives to solve the remaining externalities, as well, but in practice, the transactions costs of such negotiations are apparently prohibitively high.

What about TURFs? TURFs help solve the problem of managing harvests over time and space and can help protect sensitive areas given that an individual or group has sole rights to that area. Local cooperatives have the advantage of being able in principle to manage interspecies interactions and habitat destruction, but in practice TURFs tend to suffer from conflict and coordination problems. Another common criticism of TURFs is that the scale must match the range of the species and many TURFs do not (or cannot) achieve this size.

Rather than framing the issue as whether ITQs or TURFs are the best choice, it may be that each has its own niche. Certainly, in developing countries with weak institutional structures, TURFs offer many advantages over species-based ITQs. TURFs also may be most appropriate for small, local populations. On the other hand, ITQs have been used successfully for many marine fisheries. Clearly, one size does not fit all for fisheries policy.

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