According to The Economist, fishermen in Spain are clamoring for the creation of a marine sanctuary in the middle of their fishing grounds. Their reasoning is that the undisturbed ecosystems in marine sanctuaries support the entire reproductive-cycle of the local marine wildlife. Thus, though the total fishable area shrinks, total catch becomes greater than if the entire area were fished and the catch becomes more sustainable from year to year.
I’m glad that fishermen are accepting that fishing practices have to change. The fundamental problem, however, has never been the fishermen; it has been the prohibition by governments on the recognition of private property rights in the ocean. Without private property rights, fishermen have no ability to preserve the fish for future use; each one can only hope to grab as much of the resource before competitors harvest the resource to exhaustion.
As much as I like the marine sanctuary idea, what about also creating private property rights in fish stocks via individual fishing quotas? Here is an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article describing IFQs:
The system, which already operates in New Zealand, Iceland and the Philippines, sets a limit on the total allowable catch of any fish (such as the New Zealand orange roughy). Within that total catch, quotas are established, either by auction or by gift to incumbent fishermen. These quotas are tradable among individual fishermen. This offers an escape clause for some fishermen who no longer operate economically. It encourages more successful fishermen to buy fishing rights and exercise their property rights responsibly by fishing within their quota and monitoring others to make sure they do so as well. It also encourages brokers to speed up transactions and even allows environmentalists to enter the market and buy (and retire) quotas if they believe stocks are being overfished.
The success of this system is astonishing. In New Zealand the “value of the fisheries have doubled in recent years,” says Roger Beattie, a fisherman from Christchurch. The value of Icelandic fisheries has also soared, according to studies by Hannes Gissuarson, an Iceland University political science professor. Perhaps more importantly, fishermen in both locations have voluntarily reduced their catch to ensure sufficient stocks to provide a future livelihood. “Because they have the property right to secure future benefit from the resource, they are prepared to wait — to optimize their returns” says Mr. Gissuarson.
IFQs not only reach a good result, but, if done properly, are consistent with the libertarian homesteading principle of property: whoever uses a resource first has title to it. By recognizing that historical harvesters of a particular fish stock have title to specified amounts of that fish – and permitting a free market in these titles – we will foster a libertarian, prosperity-generating revolution on and in the seas.
