Economics of Fisheries Conflicts
Authors: Arnason Ragnar 
Published: April 2021

Conflicts potentially arise whenever resources are limited relative to what is desired. Conflicts are costly because to engage in them requires resources and they may cause collateral damage. Therefore, humans and other species have developed various means to avoid, deflect, and minimize conflicts. In human society, these means involve (a) customs and traditions, (b) laws and their enforcement, (c) negotiations, and (d) exchange. While analytically separable, these items are clearly interrelated and, in practice, intermingled. Their common element is the delineation and acceptance of property rights. Property rights, if sufficiently enforced, channel conflicts into exchange of valuables, that is, negotiated settlements or trade. This, as is well established in economics, has the added benefit of promoting economic efficiency.

Fisheries conflicts are manifestations of human conflicts in general. It follows that fisheries conflicts are amenable to the same basic analysis as other conflicts. Cases of fisheries conflicts abound in the world. It is probably safe to assert that anytime two or more agents pursue the same fishery conflicts arise. Some of these conflicts are comparatively minor, such as disputes between two fishers about the best fishing spots. Others are more dramatic, involving armed force such as the South Africa abalone conflict. Some involve national states and the application of navies such as the cod wars between Iceland and the United Kingdom and the lobster war between Brazil and France.

Most terrestrial natural resources have long since become subject to property rights, thus reducing conflicts and increasing economic efficiency of their use. This process has been much slower for fish resources, probably due to their relative unobservability and migratory nature. Nevertheless, the past several centuries have seen a creeping expansion of property rights in ocean and aquatic resources. The most noticeable of these developments have been (a) the enlargement of exclusive national economic zones (EEZs) and (b) the establishment of individual harvesting rights, the so-called individual and individual transferable quotas (IQs and ITQs). The enlargement of national EEZs has been going on for centuries. The IQs/ITQs are a much more recent phenomenon emerging in the 1970s. However, since this time, their application has become quite common, with more than a quarter of the global ocean catch being taken under ITQ or ITQ-like systems. It should be noted that an extension of the national EEZ is often a prerequisite for the introduction of ITQs.

Extended EEZs have greatly reduced international conflicts for fish resources. ITQs and similar property-rights based systems have similarly reduced fisheries conflicts between individuals and companies. No less importantly, these individual property rights have promoted cooperation in the joint use of aquatic resources and the gradual transfer of the fishing activity to the most efficient operators, thus greatly enhancing the net economic benefits generated by the fisheries. There are indications that property rights in fisheries are also conducive to a negotiated resolution of conflicts between fishing and other uses of aquatic resources such as mining, recreation, and ecosystem conservation.