Fishing rights, property rights, human rights: the problem of legal lock-in in UK fisheries

Abstract

Property rights are a widely advocated policy tool to encourage stewardship over a range of environmental goods. Despite the extent to which property rights are dependent upon law to work, economists rarely consider that property rights are enmeshed within a complex web of pre-existing national and international legal frameworks—such as human rights law—that put strict limitations on the way they operate. This important issue is illustrated here with reference to the legal struggles in the UK around the “ownership” of fishing rights. The social and economic changes under market-based management in the UK made the fisheries regulatory regime unpopular, and undoubtedly contributed to the overwhelming vote within the catch sector to leave the European Union, even though the responsibility to allocate fishing opportunities to the British fishing industry lay with the UK authorities. The lesson from the UK experience is that despite the legal-blindness of much resource economics, the application of economic theory should not outrun its legal foundations. We conclude that promoting the allocation of public fishing rights to the private sector without adequate safeguards—such as a valuation of the rights in question and carefully considered written terms and conditions—could be considered negligent.

Moving beyond panaceas in fisheries governance

“…This does not guarantee that fishing communities will not embrace panaceas, including ITQs, but they will experience the costs of the panacea sooner and more extensively, giving them incentives to find policy options with fewer negative side effects. The combined effects of these factors are apparent in the Icelandic fishery described below, but have also been documented in the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom, Peru, and other fisheries where quota consolidation is permitted or where coastal communities are otherwise excluded (50,72,86,90).…”

“…It is always easier to raise the total allowable harvests in good years and harder to lower them in bad years. But when powerful groups of "owners" treat shares as assets, it can be nearly impossible to achieve the needed flexibility (77,90,92,94,95). Macroeconomic instabilities also have been observed in cases where fisheries rights are used as financial instruments in fisheries-dependent countries.…”

Small-Scale Fishing and Sustainability. An Ethnographic Approach to the Case of Self-Employed Fishermen in the South-East of Spain

“…In our case study, given the particularity of the discipline we analyzed, and the local, national, and supranational contexts in which we situated our research, we examined with more interest different works that have been carried out in northern European countries since the 1980s. These studies focus on the impact of European policies (Common Fishing Policies) on small-scale fishing communities from a social, economic, and environmental approach [4][5][6]39,40].…”

“…However, these measures, far from resolving the situation described above, in many cases had a negative impact on fishing communities. In particular, we are referring to the small-scale fishing communities of Europe-Denmark, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Spain, among others-and how, in their case, they have seen this type of activity change, which in these cases also means a specific way of life [4][5][6][7].…”

Beyond Brexit – Is the UK’s Fixed Quota Allocation (FQA) system in need of a fix?

“…Under the CFP a central TAC for quota species in the EU combined EEZ, based on scientific advice and political negotiation is agreed. The United Kingdom (UK) had, until 31 st December 2020, been given, along with other member states, a share of this as an annual TAC to utilise in line with its own national fisheries management strategy (Appleby et al, 2018;Le Gallic et al, 2018; The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2002Union, , 2018.…”