Into the deep blue sea: Commons theory and international governance of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

Abstract

Abstract:The need to understand how to sustainably govern oceanic fisheries has become increasingly urgent as their contribution to global food security and livelihoods are threatened by declining stocks. Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (ABFT) is a prominent example of the complexities associated with widely distributed oceanic resources, extending in this case to include much of the North-Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. This distribution has led to limited attention from commons theorists that tend to focus on small-scale social ecological systems. Therefore in order to explore the fit between theories of the commons developed in small-scale systems, we apply the Social-Ecological Systems Meta-Analysis Database (SESMAD) to systematically analyze ABFT governance over a 22 year period. The results, which focus on the effects of resource characteristics, broadly correspond to the expectations of commons theory. Interestingly, however, the addition of resource storage in the form of ABFT ranches appears to be contributing to unsustainable harvests. This stands in contrast to previous findings in the commons literature that storage tends to enhance prospects for sustainable governance. Therefore several alternative hypotheses are developed 278Graham Epstein et al.by comparing and contrasting attributes of ABFT and canal irrigation storage. These hypotheses may be used in future research to evaluate the conditions in which storage enhances prospects for sustainable governance.

Governing large-scale social-ecological systems: Lessons from five cases

“…The Protocol is the most widely ratified treaty in the history of the United Nations. This case is comprised of two snapshots (Epstein et al 2014b): (1) from the mid-1970s when the threat of ozone-depleting substances was first realized until 1989 when the Montreal Protocol was finally ratified; (2) the second snapshot runs from the ratification of the Protocol until its 25th Anniversary (2012). The major change between the two periods is the creation, development, and implementation of a governance system that manages the production and release of ozone depleting substances and, in the process, indirectly manages ozone.…”

“…The five case studies are: global regulation of ozone-depleting substances in the Montreal Protocol (Epstein et al 2014a); management of Atlantic Bluefin tuna, an open ocean fishery (Epstein et al 2014b); mitigation of trans-boundary water pollution in the Rhine region ; national forest management in Indonesia ), and; a regional marine protected area network, the Great Barrier Reef, Australia (Evans et al 2014). Summaries of these cases are available in Table 1, as well as in the papers devoted to the cases.…”

Hydropower vs. fisheries conservation: a test of institutional design principles for common-pool resource management in the lower Mekong basin social-ecological system

“…Second, the study illustrates the usability of the SESMAD to assess the governance of an environmental commons when there are conflicts between different uses of it. Previous applications have used the database to model the conditions of a single environmental commons such as forestry (Fleischman et al 2014b), two similar commons such as the eastern and western Atlantic bluefin tuna (Epstein et al 2014b), two complementary commons such as fish and coral in the Great Barrier Reef (Evans et al 2014), and the externalities of a pollutant on a natural resource . To that list, we add the assessment of negative externalities that one resource use creates on another.…”

Forming perceptions and the limits to public participation on ocean commons: evidence from a citizens jury workshop

“…Common pool resources are resources, which, by virtue of their nature, are particularly difficult to divide, contain, or to exclude others from accessing (Young 2001;Griffin 2013). Governing such commons and CPRs, such as oceanic fisheries, is especially challenging given the complexities of managing mobile CPRs across international boundaries (Berkes et al 2006;Epstein et al 2014). Furthermore, as laid out in Ostrom's design principles (1990), and supported by later study (e.g.…”

“…Such inclusion of public views is considered a requirement in contemporary environmental governance (Fischer 1993;Newig 2007;Epstein et al 2014;Drazkiewicz et al 2015) and the form it takes varies from on-line consultations (Schulz and Newig 2015) to open hearings (Irvin and Stansbury 2004) to including stakeholders on advisory committees (Griffin 2007). This article presents data from a research-led citizens jury-inspired deliberative workshop held to tease out stakeholder views of management priorities for a section of the North Sea: the Dogger Bank.…”