Game Theory and Fisheries Management by Lone Grønbæk & Marko Lindroos & Gordon Munro & Pedro Pintassilgo

Author:Lone Grønbæk & Marko Lindroos & Gordon Munro & Pedro Pintassilgo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030401122
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

4.5 Policy Implications

In terms of policy issues, this chapter, focusing on two-player games, has been restricted to the management of the transboundary international fishery resources. This is a fishery management problem much simpler than those to be encountered in coming chapters. The policy implications are quite straightforward. First, the key conclusion of Chap. 3 is strengthened. In the management of transboundary fishery resource cooperation, with few exceptions, does matter. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is very much a reality. This was shown to be strikingly the case with North Pacific seals. Non-cooperative management in these instances promised destruction of the resources. With regards to Pacific salmon, the players learned through experience that non-cooperation is costly. Even in the case of Arcto-Norwegian cod, where the resource was not threatened, the players perceived, correctly, that cooperation in resource management pays handsomely.

Second, experience has shown that long-term stable, binding, cooperative management regimes are, in fact, feasible in the case of transboundary fishery resources. Arcto-Norwegian cod illustrates this fact. Undoubtedly, the relatively small number of players helps.

What then leads to resource management cooperation, beyond communication between/among the players? The clear recognition by all players that a potential significant cooperative surplus exists is obviously essential. In the case studies explored, this recognition has been seen to arise in many instances, because of experience with the dire consequences of non-cooperative management.

Next, experience demonstrates that the satisfying of the individual rationality constraint does indeed matter. One of the factors leading to the seizing up of the Canada-US Pacific Salmon Treaty in the early 1990s was that this constraint was, for a time, allowed to remain unsatisfied for one of the players.

The experience reveals that side payments (“negotiation facilitators”) are, one must concede, not always necessary. That being said, if players refuse to consider them, they do so at their cost. Side payments can result in larger economic payoffs for the players (larger cooperative surplus) and can, importantly, broaden the scope for bargaining. This can be seen in the case of Arcto-Norwegian cod, and could be seen dramatically in the case of North Pacific fur seals. With regards to Pacific salmon, another factor leading to the dangerous breakdown in the early 1990s was the narrowness of the scope for bargaining, exacerbated by the refusal even to consider side payments. The lesson was eventually learned.

There is one important policy implication brought out by the case studies that is to be explored in detail in later chapters. This relates to resiliency. All cooperative resource management arrangements are at risk of unpredictable shocks over time, which can be environmental, economic or political. If these arrangements lack resilience, the ability to withstand such shocks, the arrangements, while initially stable, can disintegrate turning a cooperative resource management arrangement into a competitive one, with all that implies. In two of the cases examined, such shocks arose: Arcto-Norwegian cod and Pacific salmon. The Arcto-Norwegian cod cooperative management regime displayed the requisite resilience; the Pacific salmon one did not.

References

Armstrong, C. (1994). Co-operative solutions in a transboundary fishery: The Russian–Norwegian co-management of the Arcto-Norwegian cod stock.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.