Comparing Proactive and Reactive Management: Managing a Transboundary Fish Stock Under Changing Environment

Abstract

Abstract. Environmental change in general, and climate change in particular, can lead to changes in distribution of fish stocks. When such changes involve transboundary fish stocks, the countries sharing the stock need to reconsider their harvesting policies. We investigate the effects of changing stock distribution on the optimal fishing policies in a two players' non-cooperative game. We compare reactive management, under which the manager ignores future distributional shifts (knowingly or unknowingly), with proactive management where the manager considers such shifts in his decisions. A dynamic programming model is developed to identify closed-loop Nash strategies. We show that the role of two players is symmetric under reactive management but asymmetric under proactive management where managers anticipate future changes in stock ownership. The player loosing the stock tends to harvest more aggressively compared to the player gaining the stock who acts more conservatively. Strategic interactions show tendency for complementary actions that can change abruptly during the ownership transition. The differences between management regimes vary from quantitative to qualitative; differences are minimal for stocks with little or no schooling, whereas highly-schooling stocks may avoid collapse only under proactive management.

A spatially comprehensive, hydrometeorological data set for Mexico, the U.S., and Southern Canada 1950–2013

“…Yet, creating multi-decadal data sets that span international boundaries presents a unique challenge, specifically to avoid discontinuities and artifacts related to data availability, collection protocols, and quality. Such artifacts can subsequently impact key transboundary water-related estimates, such as fish stocks 4 , water sharing agreements 5 , historical hydroclimatic assessments 6 , hydrologic forecasting 7 , 8 , and regional hydroclimatic phenomena such as the North American Monsoon (NAM 9–11 ). Here, we applied a previously published methodology 12 to create a sub continental daily data set of gridded station precipitation and maximum and minimum temperatures with minimal transboundary discontinuity.…”

Searching for a New Model of Governance in the High Seas: Game Theory Applied to International Commons Management

“…Other important scientific outputs include the study of Gorniewicz and Wiszniewska-Matyszkiel [123] submitting evidence of the Allee effect and the possibility of stock extinction when critical levels of fish stocks are reached. In another direction, see, for example, the work of Liu and Heino [124] addressing the impact of the spatial distribution of a fish stock in international fisheries. These efforts have to be maintained.…”

The potential utility of carotenoid‐based coloration as a biomonitor of environmental change

“…Although the dramatic end‐result consequences of HIREC are relatively easy to observe (decline and extinction of animal populations), we currently lack the tools to detect early changes in population health. Indeed, current management plans tend to be reactive, rather than proactive, and have often been implemented too late (Liu & Heino 2013, Adams 2016). We also lack the means of evaluating the effectiveness of experimentally modifying the environment, in the early stages of, or perhaps even prior to, changes in population abundance.…”