Gunnar Knapp

The Fishery Performance Indicators: A Management Tool for Triple Bottom Line Outcomes

Pursuit of the triple bottom line of economic, community and ecological sustainability has increased the complexity of fishery management; fisheries assessments require new types of data and analysis to guide science-based policy in addition to traditional biological information and modeling. We introduce the Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs), a broadly applicable and flexible tool for assessing performance in individual fisheries, and for establishing cross-sectional links between enabling conditions, management strategies and triple bottom line outcomes. Conceptually separating measures of performance, the FPIs use 68 individual outcome metrics—coded on a 1 to 5 scale based on expert assessment to facilitate application to data poor fisheries and sectors—that can be partitioned into sector-based or triple-bottom-line sustainability-based interpretative indicators. Variation among outcomes is explained with 54 similarly structured metrics of inputs, management approaches and enabling conditions. Using 61 initial fishery case studies drawn from industrial and developing countries around the world, we demonstrate the inferential importance of tracking economic and community outcomes, in addition to resource status.

The Political Economics of Marine Aquaculture in the United States

ABSTRACT Government regulatory policies and social acceptance are critically important to the growth of marine aquaculture in the United States. In much of the country, opposition to marine aquaculture by local and national interest groups and local, state, tribal, or national policies have limited marine aquaculture to a scale far below its potential. There are several reason for this: (1) Marine aquaculture is relatively small, diverse, and (with some notable exceptions) unproven; (2) marine waters are public resources; (3) some Americans perceive potential negative effects of marine aquaculture without offsetting positive effects; (4) aquaculture faces significant social opposition; and (5) the governance system for leasing and regulation hinders the development of U.S. marine aquaculture. This article discusses five broad strategies and recent efforts to advance marine aquaculture in the United States: (1) fixing problems, (2) creating benefits, (3) building partnerships, (4) arguing effectively, and (5) reforming governance.

Voluntary Approaches to Transitioning from Competitive Fisheries to Rights-Based Management: Bringing the Field into the Lab

This paper describes a novel experiment designed to examine how rent dissipation may occur in fisheries in which the right to participate is limited and fishermen compete amongst themselves for shares of an exogenous total allowable catch. We demonstrate that rent dissipation may occur through multiple mechanisms, and that the heterogeneity of fishermen has important implications for how rent dissipation occurs and the extent to which different individuals may benefit from the implementation of rights-based management. We apply this approach to investigate the concept of voluntary rights-based management under which managers divide the total allowable catch between two separate fisheries, and fishermen may choose between fishing for a guaranteed individual harvest quota and competing for a share of the total catch in a competitive fishery.

Alaska's North Slope Borough revisited

Alaskas North Slope Borough, established in 1972, is a unique institution of Native-controlled local government in the north. Providing a case study of Native self-determination under favourable conditions of indigenous, local control of resource wealth and political power, it has been the instrument by which local Inupiat capturedand used oil wealth, with clear economic and political benefits. They have gained high levels of local public services, jobs, and incomes; and effective representation in negotiations with external corporate and government authorities; the borough has also preserved and adapted critical elements of traditional culture. Costs of development and changeunder borough leadership have included waste and inefficiency, crime and corruption. Centralized power in borough headquarters has reduced the independence of borough villages and encouraged borough citizens to act like clients and consumers. Borough economy remains dependent on uncertain tax revenues from oil, with uncertain future employment opportunities for a rapidly growing Native population. North Slope Borough government has provided the Inupiat with means to greater political self-sufficiency, and the borough has responded effectively, under great pressure, to the opportunities and problems that petroleum development has brought to the region.