Incentive-based approaches to sustainable fisheries

The failures of traditional target-species management have led many to propose an ecosystem approach to fisheries to promote sustainability. The ecosystem approach is necessary, especially to account for fishery-ecosystem interactions, but by itself is not sufficient to address two important factors contributing to unsustainable fisheries — inappropriate incentives bearing on fishers, and the ineffective governance that frequently exists in commercial, developed fisheries managed primarily by total harvest limits and input-controls. We contend that much greater emphasis must be placed on fisher motivation when managing fisheries. Using evidence from more than a dozen ‘natural experiments’ in commercial fisheries, we argue that incentive-based approaches that better specify community, individual harvest, or territorial rights and also price ecosystem services — coupled with public research, monitoring and effective oversight — promote sustainable fisheries.