privatizing fish harms the public good:
lessons from canada
marc allain, policy advisor, world
forum of fish harvesters and fish
workers
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What happens when you
establish private property rights in
a fishery and let the market decide
who should own the right to fish?
Fishing communities,
traditional fishing families and
conservation all lose out. At least
that's what the Canadian experience
shows.
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In the mid-1990s, Canada 's Department
of Fisheries and Oceans decided that
establishing private property rights and
allowing the concentration of ownership was
the most efficient way to deal with a
perceived over-capitalization problem in
its Pacific fishery. The Department
introduced a series of policy reforms that
established tradable fishing quotas and
encouraged investors to accumulate both
quotas and licences.
Now, two studies suggest that the
government's market-driven solutions
created just as many economic, social and
ecological problems as they solved. Rural
ownership of licences and quota declined
precipitously. Traditional fishing
communities - including aboriginal
communities, which were particularly hard
hit - lost 45% of all major licences.
The big winners were urban investors -
both corporate and individual - who had
better access to the capital needed to
purchase the quotas and fishing licences
that increased rapidly in value as more
buyers entered the market. Rural residents,
hobbled by lower incomes, reduced economic
opportunities and lower property values
that limited their borrowing ability,
simply could not match the prices urban
dwellers and corporations were willing to
pay for licences and quotas.
Another notable consequence was the
negative impact on conservation. Advocates
of fisheries privatization often argue that
private property rights are a boon to
conservation because they are supposed to
foster resource stewardship and a
conservation ethic in the property owner.
But the Canadian experiment with
privatization is producing the opposite
effect. The increased capital costs of
fishing and concentration of ownership are
having a pernicious effect on conservation.
Urban investors who now control quotas and
licences often lease them back to working
fishermen, who have to fish harder and cut
corners on conservation by over-fishing to
make their lease payments and make ends
meet.
a way forward in atlantic inshore
fisheries
So if freely-traded private property
rights in fisheries create more problems
than they solve, what policy alternatives
are there to foster sustainable fisheries?
The WTO's foray into the liberalization of
trade in fish and fish products under the
NAMA process (see page 7) makes this
question all the more urgent.
Ironically, Canada might have a
promising alternative to propose. In what
is known as the Atlantic “inshore
fisheries”, Canada limits access to
valuable species like lobster and crab to
small boats, issues licences only to
individual fish harvesters, limits each
individual to one licence per species, and
requires each individual licence holder to
fish their licences personally. It also
explicitly prohibits processing companies
from holding inshore fishing licences,
thereby blocking the vertical integration
of fish harvesting and fish processing
operations.
These policies have created an inshore
fleet of approximately 15,000 independent
licence holders and an additional 30,000
crew members who generate 75% of the landed
value and 99% of the employment in Atlantic
Canada's annual $1.8 billion fishery.
Moreover, these licences are distributed
over hundreds of small coastal communities,
making the inshore fishery in Atlantic
Canada an important source of rural
employment.
Under WTO rules, it is not clear whether
fishing countries like Canada, India or
Brazil will be able to adopt or keep
fisheries policies that discriminate in
favor of small independent fish harvesters
living in rural areas, or pursue other
measures that foster food security or food
sovereignty. In the ongoing NAMA
negotiations however, countries that have
already privatized their fisheries are
pushing definitions of subsidies that if
adopted would straightjacket other
countries and force them down the path of
privatization and corporate
concentration.
This can't be allowed to happen.
Simplistic, private property rights regimes
based on capital investment aren't the
solution to the world's fisheries problems.
Private property rights and market
mechanisms will not ensure that fishing is
sustainable, nor provide the quality of
life that rural people seek. The market
doesn't care about conservation, fishing
families, fishing communities or whether
there should be fish in the water for
future generations. There are places the
WTO shouldn't be going, and a country's
fisheries policies are among them.
more information: www.pcffa.org/wff.htm
