Opening Statement by Hon John Luxton NZ Minister of Food, Fibre, Biosecurity and Border Control New Zealand fully supports the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and urges member nations to implement its provisions as soon as possible. While New Zealand has not yet formally implemented the Code, most of its principles already exist in New Zealand law. In some cases, even higher standards apply. It is no exaggeration to say that the world's fisheries are in a state of crisis. In 1993 the FAO estimated that more than 69 percent of the world's marine stocks, for which data are available, were either fully exploited, over exploited, depleted, or very slowly recovering from overfishing.
Many fisheries are open access resources.
New Zealand's response to this problem was to create property rights. Only those with a right to the resource may fish it. A system based on property rights creates strong incentives on those that own access rights, to maximise profit from their fishing activity. Such an approach provides appropriate economic incentives to fishers as well as providing for effective protection of the fisheries' sustainability. New Zealand's quota management system or QMS is based upon ITQs.