Industry Participation and Fishery Management Performance

Abstract

"Fish populations have the potential to contribute to the long-term economic and social benefit of humans, but to do so they must be managed in ways which maintain ecological health. Four measures of management performance are equity, stewardship, regulatory resilience, and efficiency. A key factor in management performance is the process by which management tools are developed and implemented. One approach to improving performance is to structure the management process around industry participation. The paper analyzes three case studies of industry participation in Pacific groundfish management processes: license limitation program, inter-gear sablefish allocation, and fixed-gear sablefish individual transferable quotas. The case studies illustrate the role played by participation in contributing to equity, stewardship, resilience, and efficiency of the management process. In the three cases, industry participation in the processes resulted in different effects on management performance. The reasons for these differences provide insight into the role industry participation plays. The effect of participation on fishery performance measures depends not only on the structure and process of participation, but also on resource conditions and on the program under consideration. Participation can contribute positively to fishery management performance when it is representative of all interests, creates a clear process, is appropriately timed, lengthens the expectation of tenure, aims at flexibility, is operationally grounded, and is sensitive to equity issues."