The potential and limits of a common-property system for sustainable high seas fishing

Abstract

This thesis argues that the international regime for the governance of high seas fishing lacks a key institutional principle necessary to promote sustainable behaviours among state actors. The multilateral regional fisheries management organisations of the current regime have developed no system, or only a very weak system, to establish and enforce requisite norms of behaviour among member states. The thesis thus distinguishes fisheries management from fisheries governance. With management defined by its control mechanisms and governance by its mechanisms of control. The mechanisms of fisheries management include controls on authorisation to fish, limits on fishing effort and on fish catch. Yet, high seas fisheries remain seriously degraded. This is because many multilateral fishing treaties have struggled to reverse the historical and unsustainable rates of catch that were already in place before they entered into force. Sustainable high seas fisheries require a new approach to governance mechanisms of control. The thesis thus explores the relevant definitions and details of property structures. Particularly, the concept of usufruct as a specific and limited use privilege over a thing. The holder of such an individual withdrawal right may take away some of the natural thing of value provided it does not alter the substance of the thing. The individual benefits of fish catch must be harnessed to deliver the collective future benefits from a productive fish stock. In this context, the thesis studies the potential and limits of property rights mechanisms in international fisheries institutions. It examines the statements of international treaties using Ostrom’s institutional grammar technique. The coding techniques of the institutional grammar are used to extract statements of strategy, norm, and rule from the written conventions and measures of fishery treaties. These institutional statements are used to support the thesis argument that the studied treaties are purposive institutions but do not reproduce expected behavioural norms. The thesis research finds that requisite institutional rules to promote member state compliance are weak or non-existent. Governance must shift the emphasis from an individual benefit from fish-caught to the collective benefit from a fully productive fish-stock. All group members expect violators of collective agreements to be punished. Effective international governance must cause compliant behaviour to be reproduced by state members. The thesis proposes institutional policy statements that will shift state member behaviour towards sustainable fishing practice.