Troubled International Waters: Bringing the State (system) Back In

Abstract

"This paper examines fisheries in international waters and argues that the four resource management regimes identified by those working in the field of common property, State Property Regimes, Private Property Regimes, Common Property Regimes, and Nonproperty Regimes, fail to capture the essence of these fisheries. Just as Hardin is criticized for being historically inaccurate, these models also fail to capture key aspects of high seas fisheries. This paper proposes that these fisheries are best understood for most of the period (1945-present) as operating as according to principles generated by specific interstate and international economic rather than as constituting management regimes in themselves. Futhermore, viewing the problem of international fisheries from this perspective tends to bias the consideration of solutions to the very real problems of overfishing in favor of the extension of coastal state authority. This paper further argues that the problems of the fisheries of international waters are not best solved by extending coastal state jurisdiction to these waters and that the attempt to do so raises some very serious questions of international distributive justice."