Abstract
As one of the world’s largest commons, oceans provide a challenge for free market environmental solutions. Outside the territorial limits of sovereign countries, only weak treaties limit the use of ocean resources for fishing, mineral or energy development, shipping, and garbage disposal. With few restrictions on entry, a tragedy of the commons can occur, resulting in such problems as pollution and severely depleted fish stocks.1 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that 25 percent of the commercial fish stocks in the world are overfished and another 44 percent are fully exploited.2 Moreover, pressure on the commons is increasing, as new technologies raise returns to exploiting ocean resources. For example, new drilling techniques make deepwater oil exploration and production feasible; shipping technologies are increasing the size of oil tankers and the potential for oil spills; and far-ranging vessels equipped with sonar, onboard processing, efficient harvesting devices, and refrigeration allow fishing fleets to deplete ocean fisheries.
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Notes
For an example of pollution at sea, see Ronald Mitchell, “Intentional Oil Pollution of the Oceans,” in Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Protection, ed. Peter M. Haas et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 183–247. For two examples of stock depletion close to home, see Michael De Alessi, “Fishing for Solutions: The State of the World’s Fisheries,” in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 87–89.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1996 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Interior, November 1997); Nelson Bryant, “Fishing Licenses Are At Issue,” New York Times, February 5, 1989; Gina Maranto, “Caught in Conflict,” Sea Frontiers 35 (May–June 1988): 144–51; National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Our Living Oceans: Report on the Status of U.S. Living Marine Resources, 1999, U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-F/SPO-41, on-line version, website: http://spo.nwr.noaa.gov/fa3.pdf.
Ross Eckert, The Enclosure of Ocean Resources (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), 4.
The term “tragedy of the commons” was taken from Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (December 1968): 1243–48.
For a classic article on the commons problem, see H. Scott Gordon, “The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource: The Fishery,” Journal of Political Economy 62 (April 1954): 124–42. See also Colin W. Clark, “Profit Maximization and the Extinction of Animal Species,” Journal of Political Economy 81 (August 1981): 950–60.
Frederick W. Bell, “Technological Externalities and Common-Property Resources: An Empirical Study of the U.S. Northern Lobster Fishery,” Journal of Political Economy 80 ( January–February 1972): 156.
See Tom Tietenberg, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, 2d ed. (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1988), 258–64.
J. A. Crutchfield and G. Pontecorvo, The Pacific Salmon Fisheries: A Study of Irrational Conservation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, for Resources for the Future, 1969); “The Flaw in the Fisheries Bill,” Washington Post, April 13, 1976.
Francis T. Christy, Jr., and Anthony Scott, The Common Wealth in Ocean Fisheries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, for Resources for the Future, 1965), 15–16; Crutchfield and Pontecorvo, The Pacific Salmon Fisheries, 46.
James A. Crutchfield, “Resources from the Sea,” in Ocean Resources and Public Policy, ed. T. S. English (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), 115.
Robert Higgs, “Legally Induced Technical Regress in the Washington Salmon Fishery,” Research in Economic History 7 (1982): 82.
Clarence G. Pautzke and Chris W. Oliver, Development of Individual Fishing Quota Program for Sablefish and Halibut Longline Fisheries off Alaska (Anchorage: North Pacific Fishery Management Council, 1977), 2.
Anthony Scott, “Market Solutions to Open-Access, Commercial Fisheries Problems,” paper presented at Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management 10th Annual Research Conference, Seattle, October 27–29, 1988, 7–8.
William J. Chandler, ed., Audubon Wildlife Report, 1988/1989 (San Diego: Academic Press, 1988), 48.
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Michael De Alessi, Fishing for Solutions (London, England: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1998), 43; Peter Hartley, Conservation Strategies for New Zealand (Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Business Roundtable, 1997), 97.
Ragnar Arnason, “Property Rights as an Organizational Framework in Fisheries: The Cases of Six Fishing Nations,” in Taking Ownership: Property Rights and Fishery Management on the Atlantic Coast, ed. Brian Lee Crowley (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, 1996), 120–21.
Christopher Sporer, “An Intelligent Tale of Fish Management,” Fraser Forum, December 1998, 12–13.
William L. Robinson, “Individual Transferable Quotas in the Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Fishery,” in Fishery Access Control Programs Worldwide: Proceedings of the Workshop on Management Options for the North Pacific Longline Fishers, Alaska Sea Grant Report no. 86–4 (Orca Island, WA: University of Alaska, 1986), 189–205.
National Research Council, Sharing the Fish: Toward a National Policy on Individual Fishing Quotas (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 293; National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Economic Status of U.S. Fisheries, 1996.
Parzival Copes, “A Critical Review of the Individual Quota as a Device in Fisheries Management,” Land Economics 62 (August 1986): 278–91.
For complete discussions, see Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, “Privatizing the Commons: An Improvement?” Southern Economic Journal 50 (1983): 438–50, and Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, “The Race for Property Rights,” Journal of Law and Economics 33 (April 1990): 177–97.
Richard J. Agnello and Lawrence P. Donnelley, “Prices and Property Rights in the Fisheries,” Southern Economic Journal 42 (October 1979): 253–62.
James J. Acheson, “Capturing the Commons: Legal and Illegal Strategies,” in The Political Economy of Customs and Culture: Informal Solutions to the Commons Problem, ed. Terry L. Anderson and Randy T. Simmons (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1993), 69–83.
Donald R. Leal, “Community-Run Fisheries: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons,” PERC Policy Series No. PS-7 (Bozeman, MT: Political Economy Research Center, September 1996).
Ronald N. Johnson and Gary D. Libecap, “Contracting Problems and Regulation: The Case of the Fishery,” American Economic Review 12 (December 1982): 1007.
James L. Anderson and James E. Wilen, “Implications of Private Salmon Aquaculture on Prices, Production, and Management of Salmon Resources,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 68 (November 1986): 877.
Nelson Bryant, “A Scottish Group Protects Salmon,” NewYork Times, January 8, 1990, S-13.
Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Enviro-Capitalists: Doing GoodWhile DoingWell (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997), 103.
Sue Scott, “Greenland Salmon Fishery Ends,” News Release Communiqué, Atlantic Salmon Federation, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, August 1, 1993.
Edwin S. Iversen and Jane Z. Iversen, “Salmon-farming Success in Norway,” Sea Frontiers (November–October 1987): 355–61; Cheryl Sullivan, “Salmon Feedlots in Northwest,” Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 1987. See also Robert R. Sticker, “Commercial Fishing and Net-pen Salmon Aquaculture: Turning Conceptual Antagonism Toward a Common Purpose,” Fisheries 13 ( July–August 1988): 9–13.
Merrill Leffler, “Killing Maryland’s Oysters,” Washington Post, March 29, 1987.
Bruce Yandle, “The Commons: Tragedy or Triumph?” The Freeman, April 1999, 32.
Anthony D. Scott, “The ITQ as a Property Right: Where it Came From, How It Works, and Where It Is Going,” in Taking Ownership, 97.
Ronald N. Johnson, “Implications of Taxing Quota Value in an Individual Transferable Quota Fishery,” Marine Resource Economics 10 (1995): 327–40.
Gregory B. Christainsen and Brian C. Gothberg, “The Potential of High Technology for Establishing Tradeable Rights to Whales,” paper presented at “The Technology of Property Rights,” 1999 PERC Political Economy Forum, Bozeman, Montana, December 2–5, 1999.
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© 2001 Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal
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Anderson, T.L., Leal, D.R. (2001). Homesteading the Oceans. In: Free Market Environmentalism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299736_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299736_9
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