How do commercial fishing licences relate to access?

Abstract

Commercial fishing licences are central to fisheries management systems. They define and allocate harvest rights, place rules upon authorized harvesters and, in some cases, require holders to pay user fees. In this paper, we ask how licences and licensing relate to access, itself a broader concept defined as the opportunity to derive benefits from resources and that draws attention to how institutions and social structures enable and constrain different individuals and groups. Using published literature, reports and publicly available licence data for fisheries off of British Columbia, Canada, we overview licensing history and examine all major commercial licence types in the jurisdiction. Using a network approach, we also describe the diverse suite of licence portfolios held in 2017. Results show that there were 6,563 commercial fishing licences registered by 2,377 unique holders, including a handful that hold ‘access‐rich’ and a much larger number who hold ‘access‐constrained’ portfolios. The literature review and analysis support two broadly applicable conclusions. First, that licensing history shapes access and that limited entry policies continue to influence who benefits from fisheries resources well beyond implementation. Second, that analysing licence holdings suggests business strategies and fishing prospects available to different harvesters and other commercial fisheries participants in a jurisdiction. In response to demand for greater attention to human dimensions and to the perception that indicators are challenging to develop and integrate, we advance conceptual thinking and practical approaches relevant to fisheries research and evaluation.

The Politics of Ocean Governance Transformations

“…As competing interests in the ocean continue to grow, understanding how politics shape ocean governance transformations will be critical to achieving outcomes that are sustainable and equitable (Bennett et al, 2019b;Virdin et al, 2021). The politics of ocean governance transformations takes many forms, from the politics of participation, to profound differences in political power and the (in)ability to control the narrative, to the resultant (re)distributions of marine resources (Campbell et al, 2009;Silver, 2014;Silver and Stoll, 2019). The inherently political nature of transformational change urges us to ask: Who is driving these changes?…”

“…In the Seychelles, for example, the adoption of a market-based governance approach, and the associated pricing and property regimes, may render the country more vulnerable to international market fluctuations and the uneven power dynamics of expanding foreign investment and multilateral negotiation. Previous research has suggested that the entry of private actors into public policy domains can lead to the consolidation of economic and political power among a small group of corporate actors (Pinkerton, 2017;Silver and Stoll, 2019). Similarly, the increasing prevalence of blue growth agendas, often framed by the concept of the blue economy, has prompted concern about the potential negative environmental and social impacts of deepened market-based governance (Silver et al, 2015;Schutter and Hicks, 2019;Bennett et al, 2021).…”

“…Each case offers unique insights on the politics of transformation but collectively contribute to ongoing theoretical debates about transformations in ocean governance through a lens that challenges apolitical accounts of such processes. Explicit engagement with the motivations and politics of transformational change is relevant since radical reform in ocean governance will inevitably produce uneven processes and material impacts that often exclude the most marginalized and vulnerable (Silver, 2014;Silver and Stoll, 2019). Specifically, our analysis of these cases was guided by three central questions:…”

The effects of population synchrony, life history, and access constraints on benefits from fishing portfolios

“…Managers are faced with a trade‐off between maximizing profitability and minimizing interannual variability because increasing access tends to lead to both less variability and less revenue for individuals (Silver and Stoll 2019). Empirical work has demonstrated that less diverse fishing portfolios are associated with both increased revenue and decreased revenue stability (Anderson et al 2017, Ward et al 2018).…”

The effects of population synchrony, life history, and access constraints on benefits from fishing portfolios

“…Managers are faced with a tradeoff between maximizing profitability and minimizing interannual variability because increasing access tends to lead to both less variability and less revenue for individuals, (Silver and Stoll 2019). Empirical work has demonstrated that less diverse fishing portfolios are associated with both increased revenue and decreased revenue stability (Anderson et al 2017, Ward et al 2018.…”