Economic Effects Of Marine Protected Areas On Small Scale Fisheries

Author : Amanda Ruth Lindsay
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781392497319
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (973 download)

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Download or read book Local Economic and Environmental Impacts of Marine Fisheries Policies in Rural Coastal Economies written by Amanda Ruth Lindsay and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sustainable management of small-scale fisheries are critically important to developing countries because they support a wide range of income generating opportunities, they are a large contributor to animal protein intake, and they are home to some of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the world. However marine capture fisheries in developing countries tend to be relatively undermanaged and underregulated, compared to their counterparts in developed countries. In these settings, policy makers often try to restore overexploited fisheries by incentivizing more sustainable fishing activities, or alternative livelihoods, rather than establishing property rights over scarce fish stocks. Frequently, these marine fisheries policies are designed to simultaneously achieve conservation and development objectives, but the existence of multiple market failures may cause policies to have unintended consequences. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a modeling framework that will allow for a thorough examination of marine fisheries policies in rural coastal areas of developing countries. I create a bioeconomic local general equilibrium model to represent a rural island economy in eastern Indonesia. This structural model characterizes important features of the local market structure, multiple fishing activities, and the welfare of multiple household groups. The creation, parameterization and calibration of the model are outlined and discussed in chapter 1. In chapter 2, this model is used to explore the environmental and economic impacts of combinations of marine-centric and agriculture-centric sustainable development policy instruments. In chapter 3, I further develop the modeling framework, accounting for heterogenous characteristics of the nearshore fishery, spatially explicit fishing decisions, and geographically distinct fishing households. I then evaluate the environmental and economic impacts of marine reserves. The results of chapter 2 illustrate the challenge of achieving conservation and development objectives in rural economies. The considered poverty alleviation policies will increase the production capacity and income of targeted poor households. This leads to an increase in local demand for normal goods, and when these goods have locally determined prices, they can unintentionally incentivize unsustainable fishing activities and effect the income of non-target households. Pairing a capital provision policy with an increase in enforcement of fishing capital regulations may or may not be sufficient to protect nearshore fish stock from increased fishing pressure. To be successful, demand for labor in an alternative sector must outweigh price effects drawing fishermen back into the nearshore fishery. In this chapter, I additionally highlight three sensitivity analyses, allowing me to explore the internal robustness and external applicability of my findings. Qualitative results are sensitive to the elasticity of local labor supply, and the elasticity of substitution between nearshore and offshore fish. Results are not sensitive to the ecological parameters characterizing nearshore fish stock, suggesting understanding features of the economy may be more pertinent to the policy design process. In chapter 3, the new features of the modeling framework allow me to capture the spatial distribution of benefits and costs of the policy. Regionally distinct fishing households participate in different production activities and harvest nearshore fish from different areas around the island. These differences between fishing households lead to differences in how they are impacted by alternative reserve locations. In this chapter, I additionally explore the importance of one particular market failure: the output market for nearshore fish. In the preferred model specification, nearshore fish is not tradeable with outside markets, leading to a locally determined price. I find that simulation results differ substantially when the movement of the local price of nearshore fish is restricted, approximating a well-functioning market and an exogenously determined fish price. In this sensitivity analysis, I find that marine reserves are better able to protect nearshore fish stocks because restrictions to local supply do not also induce a price effect pulling effort back into the nearshore fishery. This also means that the economic costs of a reserve, incurred by fishing households, are greater because the stagnant price of nearshore fish will not compensate fishermen for increased costs and lost fishing grounds. Non-fishing households, however, will avoid added costs associated with a rising nearshore fish price. This dissertation demonstrates the value of examining the connection between a local economy and natural resources when evaluating marine fisheries policy. I advance the literature by representing local fishing activities in greater detail. These methodological improvements allow me to thoroughly disentangle the impacts policies have on management of local fisheries and the heterogenous welfare impacts. Achieving both environmental and development objectives is difficult, but it is not impossible. In both chapter 2 and chapter 3, my analysis identifies policies that improve the health nearshore fish stocks and the welfare of local households. While some policies succeed, many policies fail to achieve both objectives. The three chapters of this dissertation come together to improve a tool that can be used for ex ante policy analysis, and to demonstrate the value a holistic approach to evaluation.