Cooperation as a solution to shared resources in territorial use rights in fisheries

Abstract

Territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) are coastal territories assigned to fishermen for the exclusive extraction of marine resources. Recent evidence shows that the incentives that arise from these systems can improve fisheries sustainability. Although research on TURFs has increased in recent years, important questions regarding the social and ecological dynamics underlying their success remain largely unanswered. In particular, in order to create new successful TURFs, it is critical to comprehend how fish movement over different distances affects the development of sustainable fishing practices within a TURF. In theory, excessive spillover outside a TURF will generate incentives to overharvest. However, many TURFs have proven successful even when targeted species move over distances far greater than the TURF's size. A common attribute among some of these successful systems is the presence of inter‐TURF cooperation arrangements. This raises the question of how different levels and types of cooperation affect the motivations for overharvesting driven by the movement of fish outside the TURF. In this paper, we examine equilibrium yields under different levels of inter‐TURF cooperation (from partial to full) and varying degrees of asymmetry across TURFs of both biological capacity and benefit‐sharing. We find that partial cooperation can improve yields even with an unequal distribution of shared benefits and asymmetric carrying capacity. However, cooperation arrangements are unstable if the sharing agreement and biological asymmetries are misaligned. Remarkably, we find that asymmetry in the system can lead to the creation of voluntary no‐take zones.

True insights or ticking boxes? Rapid assessment of rights‐based management in artisanal fisheries

“…Despite variability in scores and complexity of surrounding issues, some biological characteristics ease the implementation of RBFM, such as the example of benthic resources in our study that had the highest SEASALT scores and were often involved in rights-based management in other parts of the world (Aceves-Bueno et al, 2020). This should not be surprising given that property theory is derived from land-based resources that are less mobile and more easily quantified (including land itself) than marine pelagic species, and thus RBFM was implicitly designed for this type of fishery.…”

“…Transferability of access was not a common attribute in our case studies, including cases with highest scores for property rights for property rights. In Punta Allen lobster fisheries, cooperatives allow for transfer of fishing days among its members, who all operate under the same permit (Aceves‐Bueno et al, 2020). Many concessions over benthic resources—which scored highly on SEASALT—were essentially TURFs focused on access over traditional areas rather than distinctly over biomass.…”

Sustaining small-scale fisheries through a nation-wide Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries system

“…Out of the eight possible archetypes, we were able to identify five of them within our dataset. We then selected a case study to exemplify each existent archetype, namely Punta Allen in Quintana Roo for Archetype I, Bahia Magdalena in Baja California Sur for Archetype II, the Navachise-Vinorma-Macapule lagoon complex (NVM) for Archetype III, The Tamiahua lagoon complex for Archetype IV, and the sargassum TURFs of Baja California for Archetype V. We performed a case-study selection based on our long-term involvement (>20 years) in Mexican small-scale fisheries governance [ 11 , 39 – 41 ]. Although the last three archetypes (VI-VIII) do not currently exist in Mexico, they are possible given the current regulatory framework and thus we considered necessary adding them to the archetype map.…”

Mitigating Bycatch: Novel Insights to Multidisciplinary Approaches

“…When there is a limited number of large-scale producers, bycatch reduction is simplified due to the strong coordination and lower transactions and information costs among and within large companies or other strong cooperative arrangements such as formal cooperatives or a mother ship and catcher vessels (Deacon, 2012;Kotchen and Segerson, 2019;Aceves-Bueno et al, 2020). This can lead to comparatively low transactions and information costs within and between organizational units and also with the fishery management authority.…”