Regulating the access to fisheries: learning from European experiences

The pressure on aquatic renewable resources has rapidly increased over past decades as a result of both sustained high demand and technological innovation. The relative scarcity of fishing resources is not new, but it seems today to have become a generalised phenomena for most aquatic ecosystems from local to oceanic scales. Either motivated by the desire to regulate conflicts between groups of fishermen (gears, communities, etc.) or to improve efficiency by internalising part of free access externalities, fisheries management appears fundamentally to represent a process of access rule definition and implementation. Whatever is the instrument (output or input based, regulatory or economic, market oriented or not) it is the structure of access rights that is initially affected. There is nothing original in the fact that increasing relative scarcity calls for property right structure changes. It is also not surprising that in many cases, creating an access right structure provides an opportunity for a market expression of resource value. But in the case of fisheries resource appropriation is not as simple or easy as on land. Mobility and variability of the resource, diversity of fishing techniques interacting over stocks or areas, makes the case more difficult. Furthermore, management instruments are not as similar as the economic theory of management implies. Therefore, there is no straightforward answer. This is the reason why many different routes have been chosen to regulate world fisheries. In practice, efficiency and equity objectives are rarely successfully met. The European Union, with the Common Fisheries Policy and the various local or national management schemes, offers a fair range of such examples. Referring to European examples, the key issues in the debate over fisheries management are considered.