Decision Guide To Individual Quota Iq Management Of Fisheries

The management of fisheries by catch quotas has a long history in a number of areas and has been probably the most common method of controlling exploitation of fish stocks. However, in recent years, the technique of managing by global Total Allowable Catches (TACs) has not been able to address the rapid improvements in technology of harvesting and has therefore not generally been successful in limiting fleet capacity. This, combined with practical difficulties of monitoring and enforcing TACs, has resulted in a poor record in achieving fish stock sustainability and in optimizing the economic performance of fisheries. However, recent advances in and adoption of the techniques of managing by Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), which provide greater incentives for sustaining and optimising economic performance of fisheries, have re-focused attention on quota management. The increasing interest in ITQ management has, however, not been matched by the availability of a theoretical framework for quota management which considers the various biological, economic and financial influences as part of an integrated management system. This paper is the first of a projected series which examines not only this theoretical basis of quota (particularly ITQ) management as an integrated system but also draws on practical experiences in various parts of the world to provide guidance for agencies examining the issue of quota management in fisheries. The present paper covers the biological, economic and financial issues which need to be considered in setting the Total Allowable Catch and in allocating that TAC both between participants in the fishery and between those participants and the regulatory agency. Later papers will address the issues of administration of the quota management system, compliance and surveillance issues and secondary markets for quotas.

In 1991 the Atlantic groundfish fishery in Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick experienced diminishing resources and overcapacity in the inshore mobile-gear fleet. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans instituted individual quotas (IQs) for this sector of the fishery. Soon thereafter the IQs became individual transferable quotas (ITQs). Enclosing the Commons explores the industrial micropolitics associated with the creation of the ITQ Group and the push to reduce overcapacity through economic concentration of quota shares. This important study provides the first critical examination of an ITQ approach to fisheries management.

This volume examines the impact of fish stock assessment and catch share arrangements in context through case studies and in terms of ecosystem, economy and society. It examines the rationalizing work of bio-economic projects, especially the institutionalization of individual transferable quota (ITQ) in fisheries: what impact have they had on fisheries and fishers? The contributing authors understand ITQ and quota management as bio-economic projects, that is, as widely deployed but locally constituted projects that combine biological and economic logics to rationalize production and, in this case, fish. Politicians and managers use these projects and the models that justify them to rationalize fisheries in favor of modern technology and for capital and species efficiency. Aimed at a diverse interdisciplinary fisheries management readership, and designed as a guide to issues emerging in any assessment of ITQ, the book is a timely investigation of the origins and diverse experiences of ITQ projects, including resistance to them, attempts to develop fisheries management around them, and experiences of the risks that come with them. Now around forty years old, ITQ has never been subject to the kind of comprehensive sustainability assessments once advocated by Elinor Ostrom, let alone the full-cost accounting of impacts at the national level that Evelyn Pinkerton recently called for. Fisheries, Quota Management and Quota Transfer offers multi-disciplinary assessments of the effects of ITQ from scholars working in eight countries. The book brings together scholars from anthropology, economics, geography, sociology, the history of science, and marine environmental history to discuss experiences from fisheries in eight industrialized countries. It considers cases from outside as well as inside the EU, including ITQ pioneers, New Zealand and Iceland. The combination allows for an unprecedented international perspective on stock assessments and share allocation systems. By emphasizing emerging, becoming, learning and transforming through knowledge, the book conceives technology as a field of power and choice, nevertheless dominated by managers through specific projects in specific contexts. Individual chapters relate bio-economic projects to separate theoretical literature, an approach that facilitates multi-disciplinary dialog.