IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/marpol/v26y2002i3p221-230.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The tragedy of soft choices: capacity accumulation and lopsided allocation in the Norwegian coastal cod fishery

Author

Listed:
  • Standal, Dag
  • Aarset, Bernt

Abstract

Following years of reduced cod stocks and the build up of capture capacity in the coastal fleet, the Norwegian government implemented "access closure" and "vessel quotas" at the end of the 1980s, in order to bring capture capacity under control. However, despite these rather powerful policy tools, the capacity of the Norwegian cod fishery continued to increase during the 1990s. This paper outlines the processes that led to this increase in capture capacity and to the accumulation of vessels in the large size segments of the coastal fleet, the exact opposite result of that intended by the introduction of the fisheries policy. We present two main factors to explain these trends: Firstly, the expansion in quota factors due to exchange or renewal of vessels. This provides vessel-owners with more "vessel-meters" which are equivalent to an increased share of total quota under the maximal quota regulations. This situation implies a redistribution of resources from smaller to larger vessels. Secondly, improved efficiency of technology aboard the vessels makes the vessels more efficient as capture machines. The effect of these changes remains hidden as long as the total stock increases, which was the situation from the introduction of the new regime and until the late 1990s. When the stock once again declined, the effect of the capacity build-up was exposed. A decade of soft choices, adjustments, and adaptations has used up the available solutions. New regulations and a new policy are now required.

Suggested Citation

  • Standal, Dag & Aarset, Bernt, 2002. "The tragedy of soft choices: capacity accumulation and lopsided allocation in the Norwegian coastal cod fishery," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 221-230, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:26:y:2002:i:3:p:221-230
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308-597X(02)00004-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Standal, Dag & Sønvisen, Signe Annie & Asche, Frank, 2016. "Fishing in deep waters: The development of a deep-sea fishing coastal fleet in Norway," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1-7.
    2. Standal, Dag & Hersoug, Bjørn, 2014. "Back to square one? Fisheries allocation under pressure," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 236-245.
    3. Keita Abe & Linda Nøstbakken & Mads Fjeld Wold, 2024. "Quota Consolidation in Norwegian Coastal Fisheries," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 87(5), pages 1295-1326, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:26:y:2002:i:3:p:221-230. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.