The distributional outcomes of rights-based management in fisheries.

Fisheries managers have increasingly adopted rights-based management (i.e., "catch shares" or "individual transferable quotas" [ITQs]) to address economic and biological management challenges under prior governance regimes. Despite their ability to resolve some of the symptoms of the tragedy of the commons and improve economic efficiency, catch shares remain controversial for their potentially disruptive social effects. One criticism is that the benefits of rights-based reforms are unequally distributed across vessels and between fishery participants (e.g., crew and hired captains) and that stakeholders that do not receive an allocation of harvest rights may see their remuneration decrease. Yet, empirically assessing these claims is difficult in almost all ITQs due to poor availability of longitudinal cost, earnings, and employment data. This paper evaluates these claims using vessel-level data to characterize impacts of a long-established ITQ program for Alaskan crab fisheries on the level and distribution of payments to claimant groups. We find that the share of vessel proceeds accruing to captains, crew, and vessel owners declined under the catch-share regime to make room for new payments to quota owners. Average daily payments to captains, crew, and vessel owners declined, albeit slightly, yet retained their pre-ITQ premia relative to compensation in other sectors. However, inequality in payments to workers and vessel owners declined after ITQs, as did the interseasonal volatility in compensation to workers, a measure of financial risk. Finally, we find that consolidation-induced increases in leasing costs have had little effect on workers' remuneration, but have reduced returns to vessel ownership.

Fishing to live or living to fish: Job satisfaction and identity of west coast fishermen.

Fishing is a dangerous and financially risky way to make a living, but it attracts many participants that prefer it to higher paying and safer jobs. Based on a survey of over 1400 U.S. West Coast fishing vessel owners we use factor analysis and structural equation modeling to quantify distinct latent variables representing job satisfaction related to non-monetary versus monetary aspects of fishing and measures of identity and social capital associated with being a fisher. We show that these latent variables have distinct effects on (stated) fishery participation behavior and that higher non-monetary job satisfaction, social capital, and identity, are associated with a willingness to forgo higher income to be a fisher. Understanding how these factors affect and are affected by participation in fisheries could be important to increase benefits from fisheries and to ensure sustainability of management regimes that rely on indirect controls on effort to limit catch.

Status-quo management of marine recreational fisheries undermines angler welfare.

Recreational fisheries can have a significant impact on fish populations and can suffer from the same symptoms of open access as commercial fisheries. However, recreational fisheries receive little attention compared with their commercial counterparts. Regulations designed to allocate scarce fish, such as seasonal closures and bag limits, can result in significant losses of value to anglers. We provide an estimate of these foregone benefits by estimating the potential gains to implementing management reforms of the headboat portion of the recreational red snapper fishery in the US Gulf of Mexico. This fishery has suffered from a regulatory spiral of shortened seasons and lowered bag limits in spite of rebuilding stocks. We gather primary survey data of headboat anglers that elicit trip behavior and their planned number and seasonal distribution of trips under status-quo and alternative management approaches. We use these data to estimate a model of anglers' seasonal trip demand as a function of the ability to retain red snapper, bag limits, and fees. We find that a hypothetical rights-based policy, whereby vessels with secure rights to a portion of annual catch could offer their customers year-round fishing in exchange for lower per-angler retention and increased fees, could raise the average angler's welfare by $139/y. When placed in the global context of recreational fishing, these estimates suggest that status-quo management may deprive anglers of billions of dollars of lost economic value per year.

Ecosystem-based management and the wealth of ecosystems.

We merge inclusive wealth theory with ecosystem-based management (EBM) to address two challenges in the science of sustainable management of ecosystems. First, we generalize natural capital theory to approximate realized shadow prices for multiple interacting natural capital stocks (species) making up an ecosystem. These prices enable ecosystem components to be better included in wealth-based sustainability measures. We show that ecosystems are best envisioned as portfolios of assets, where the portfolio's performance depends on the performance of the underlying assets influenced by their interactions. Second, changes in ecosystem wealth provide an attractive headline index for EBM, regardless of whether ecosystem wealth is ultimately included in a broader wealth index. We apply our approach to the Baltic Sea ecosystem, focusing on the interacting community of three commercially important fish species: cod, herring, and sprat. Our results incorporate supporting services embodied in the shadow price of a species through its trophic interactions. Prey fish have greater shadow prices than expected based on market value, and predatory fish have lower shadow prices than expected based on market value. These results are because correctly measured shadow prices reflect interdependence and limits to substitution. We project that ecosystem wealth in the Baltic Sea fishery ecosystem generally increases conditional on the EBM-inspired multispecies maximum sustainable yield management beginning in 2017, whereas continuing the current single-species management generally results in declining wealth.

Testing the feasibility of a hypothetical whaling-conservation permit market in Norway.

A cap-and-trade system for managing whale harvests represents a potentially useful approach to resolve the current gridlock in international whale management. The establishment of whale permit markets, open to both whalers and conservationists, could reveal the strength of conservation demand, about which little is known. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult to predict the outcome of a hypothetical whale permit market. We developed a bioeconomic model to evaluate the influence of economic uncertainty about demand for whale conservation or harvest. We used simulations over a wide range of parameterizations of whaling and conservation demands to examine the potential ecological consequences of the establishment of a whale permit market in Norwegian waters under bounded (but substantial) economic uncertainty. Uncertainty variables were slope of whaling and conservation demand, participation level of conservationists and their willingness to pay for whale conservation, and functional forms of demand, including linear, quadratic, and log-linear forms. A whale-conservation market had the potential to yield a wide range of conservation and harvest outcomes, the most likely outcomes were those in which conservationists bought all whale permits.

Measuring the value of groundwater and other forms of natural capital.

Valuing natural capital is fundamental to measuring sustainability. The United Nations Environment Programme, World Bank, and other agencies have called for inclusion of the value of natural capital in sustainability metrics, such as inclusive wealth. Much has been written about the importance of natural capital, but consistent, rigorous valuation approaches compatible with the pricing of traditional forms of capital have remained elusive. We present a guiding quantitative framework enabling natural capital valuation that is fully consistent with capital theory, accounts for biophysical and economic feedbacks, and can guide interdisciplinary efforts to measure sustainability. We illustrate this framework with an application to groundwater in the Kansas High Plains Aquifer, a rapidly depleting asset supporting significant food production. We develop a 10-y time series (1996-2005) of natural capital asset prices that accounts for technological, institutional, and physical changes. Kansas lost approximately $110 million per year (2005 US dollars) of capital value through groundwater withdrawal and changes in aquifer management during the decade spanning 1996-2005. This annual loss in wealth is approximately equal to the state's 2005 budget surplus, and is substantially more than investments in schools over this period. Furthermore, real investment in agricultural capital also declined over this period. Although Kansas' depletion of water wealth is substantial, it may be tractably managed through careful groundwater management and compensating investments in other natural and traditional assets. Measurement of natural capital value is required to inform management and ongoing investments in natural assets.

Associations between food environment around schools and professionally measured weight status for middle and high school students.

BACKGROUND: Obesity rates among school-age children remain high. Access to energy-dense foods at home, in schools, in stores, and restaurants around homes and schools is of concern. Research on the relationship between food environment around schools and students' weight status is inconclusive. This study examines the association between weight status of middle and high school students and proximity to a comprehensive set of food outlets around schools. METHODS: Deidentified nurse-measured heights and weights data were obtained for 12,954 middle and high school students attending 33 public schools in four low-income communities in New Jersey. Geocoded locations of supermarkets, convenience stores, small grocery stores, and limited-service restaurants were obtained from commercial sources. Random-effect regression models with robust standard errors were developed to adjust for unequal variances across schools and clustering of students within schools. RESULTS: Proximity to small grocery stores that offered some healthy options (e.g., five fruits, five vegetables, and low-fat/skim milk) and supermarkets was associated with healthier student weight status. Having a small grocery store within 0.25 mile of school and an additional such store within that radius was associated with a lower BMI z-score (p<0.05). An additional supermarket within 0.25 mile of schools was associated with a lower probability of being overweight/obese (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Improving access to healthy food outlets, such as small stores, that offer healthy food options and supermarkets around middle and high schools is a potential strategy for improving weight outcomes among students.

What are we protecting? Fisher behavior and the unintended consequences of spatial closures as a fishery management tool.

Spatial closures like marine protected areas (MPAs) are prominent tools for ecosystem-based management in fisheries. However, the adaptive behavior of fishermen, the apex predator in the ecosystem, to MPAs may upset the balance of fishing impacts across species. While ecosystem-based management (EBM) emphasizes the protection of all species in the environment, the weakest stock often dominates management attention. We use data before and after the implementation of large spatial closures in a North Pacific trawl fishery to show how closures designed for red king crab protection spurred dramatic increases in Pacific halibut bycatch due to both direct displacement effects and indirect effects from adaptations in fishermen's targeting behavior. We identify aspects of the ecological and economic context of the fishery that contributed to these surprising behaviors, noting that many multispecies fisheries are likely to share these features. Our results highlight the need either to anticipate the behavioral adaptations of fishermen across multiple species in reserve design, a form of implementation error, or to design management systems that are robust to these adaptations. Failure to do so may yield patterns of fishing effort and mortality that undermine the broader objectives of multispecies management and potentially alter ecosystems in profound ways.