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| Salmon, by often-uncredited artist, Bill Reid |
Over the past
two weeks, I’ve discussed catch shares, a system that assigns percentages of
each year’s annual catch quota to individual fishermen or fishing companies. In
the first
blog entry, I focused mostly on benefits. It was one of my most viewed
entries ever. In the second,
I focused on weaknesses. Readership dropped to levels not seen since I
introduced a new
graphical technique or pressed my lucky by posting a third
consecutive entry about climate change. Maybe there is something to keeping
it positive, or perhaps the third time is the failure, not the charm. From that
feedback, you’d think I wouldn’t post a third entry about catch shares…I guess
I’m just stubborn. Rest easy, though, I will not attempt to introduce a new
graphical technique in this blog entry!
Back in
mid-January, I discussed the concept
of sustainability and its embodiment in certain forms of traditional fisheries
management. I then asked the question: does
it take a dictator to manage a fishery? In particular, I noted that
sustainable traditional fisheries management seemed to come from societies with
authoritarian rule, and suggested that a more effective dialog with fishing
communities, along with long-term planning regarding sustainability options,
was an alternate solution. This week, I consider whether property rights might
also be a sustainable alternative to authoritarian rule.
This topic came
to my mind shortly after I posted the first entry about traditional fisheries
management. My office is located across the street from the University of
Washington’s School for Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. In late January, the
speaker at the School’s weekly seminar was Virginia Butler, from Portland State
University. She described indigenous cultures in the Oregon/Washington area
as well as those in Alaska, and had a similar message of sustainability to the
one I had written about that week. However, her belief was that the sustainability
came from a strong affinity with the salmon resource, very different from mine
of authoritarian rule. This made me think carefully about how a system of sustainable
management might evolve, noting that an unstructured
society would probably suffer from the tragedy of the commons, where too
many people were pursuing too few fish.
Because of that,
property rights would most likely be an essential and natural part of the
process. Consider that the salmon resource passes through a bottleneck that,
with simple weir technology, can be monopolized if the key location, in the
case the river mouth, can be defended from others. This phenomenon of people
monopolizing salmon resources by controlling river mouths is not purely
speculation. According
to Keith Criddle, fish packers regularly created these sorts of monopolies
in Alaskan salmon fisheries following European contact, and dissatisfaction
with the authoritarian methods used by fish packers contributed to the movement
for statehood and a ban on salmon traps enacted shortly after Alaska that movement succeeded. Indigenous people may
have had similar monopolies long before European contact. This sort of monopoly
is very much akin to having a catch share, in this case the whole share. Along
with the current and future benefits from controlling the resource would come
the incentive to manage it sustainably. According to Dr. Criddle, monopolist
fish packers revitalized and sustained salmon fisheries under their control
through sustainable management practices. Management systems like the ones I
described in my blog entry about traditional salmon fisheries of northern
California would have been sustainable and relatively easy to enforce from the
mouth of the river by indigenous people. Successful monopolization of the
salmon run would bring power and wealth to those in control. In this way,
sustainable harvests and authoritarian rule may have evolved together. That
religious beliefs also played a role may mean that religion, in this case, was
co-opted to further a dictatorship, just the opposite of Dr. Butler’s view that
reverence for salmon drove management.
Though my
hypothesis involves a number of emotionally-laden concepts, the world that
resulted may not have been terrible. In pre-State Alaska, apparently the fish
packers abused their standing to shut out subsistence fishing operations and
exploit their workers. Among indigenous tribes, though, it appears that power
and wealth were shared more generously. In both cases, salmon resources were
managed in a way that produced a greater bounty for communities as a whole.
However, there may have been problems with such principles as equity, liberty,
and the potential for the abuse of power.
These same concerns
drive opposition to modern-day catch shares. If you think about it, it is a
form of authoritarian rule to give fishing rights to a select few and prevent
others from using a public resource. So, rather than serving as an alternative
to authoritarian rule, catch shares are really just a mild version. As with
indigenous tribes, this may or may not be a bad thing because it involves
trade-offs. When it comes to conservation considerations, we should keep in
mind that there are alternatives, for example a system of catch limits designed
to meet the needs of the ecosystem and fishing communities. Catch limits of
this sort should be enacted with or without catch shares. In the end, using
catch shares is more of an economic decision than a conservation one and should
be treated as such.
Best,
Josh
For
more information, read our other blog posts and visit us at Bridge Environment.
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