Ussif Rashid Sumaila

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Achieving Sustainable Fisheries The Economic
Dimension
Ussif Rashid Sumaila Fisheries Economics Research
Unit Fisheries Centre University of British
Columbia r.sumaila_at_fisheries.ubc.ca
UNEP Workshop on Subsidies and Sustainable
Fisheries Management, Geneva, 26-27 April, 2004
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Outline of talk

• Are fisheries sustainably managed? NO!!!
• Some reasons for the lack of sustainability
• Concluding remarks.

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Analysis of FAO's global fisheries catch data
set (1951-1998).Shows that there is a steady
erosion of oceanic fisheries worldwide.
Analysis by R. Froese, IfM, Kiel, Germany
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Some economic reasons for the lack of
sustainability in fisheries

• Open access
• Subsidies
• Increasing trade in the face of bad management
• Problems related to IUU fishing
• Short-sightedness in the valuation of fishery
  benefits.

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Short-sightedness in valuation
Egoism is the law of perspectives as it applies
to feelings, according to which what is closest
to us appears to be large and weighty, while size
and weight decrease with our distance from
things - by Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900).
Discounting in economics
Future benefits from todays time perspective
Value
Present
Future
Results in the urge to frontload fisheries
benefits
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Flow of 1 unit of benefit in current and
discounted value (7 d.r.)
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NPV accruing to each of 5 generations of fishers
within 100 yrs
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NPV accruing to each of 5 generations within 100
yrs
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Inter-generational discounting

• This idea has been developed further in the
  following publications
• Sumaila (2001)
• Sumaila and Buchary (under review)
• Sumaila and Walters (in press)
• Ainsworth and Sumaila (under review).

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Concluding remarks

• From these papers
• dealing with the problems of open access,
  subsidies, IUU fishing, etc., will improve the
  current situation of global fisheries

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Concluding remarks

• BUT this will not be enough
• We also need to deal with the urge to frontload
  fisheries benefits by
• Counting fisheries benefits to future
  generations from their time perspective
• Assigning property rights to fisheries resources
  to all generations.