Seminars & Workshops

Climate Variability and Multi-national Marine Fisheries:
Will Better Information Promote Sustainability?

Kathleen Miller
NCAR – Institute for the Study of Society and Environment

Abstract:
Many of the World’s marine fisheries are shared between the fleets of two or more nations. Efforts to cooperatively manage harvests are complicated by uncertainties caused by large natural variations in the abundance or migratory behavior of shared fish stocks. Cooperation may collapse if natural variations are unanticipated or misinterpreted, have asymmetrical effects on the availability of fish to the different fleets, or lead the competing parties to advocate incompatible management responses. Cases drawn from around the world demonstrate that unanticipated climate regime shifts have sometimes destabilized international fisheries cooperation, leading to destructive fish wars. The ensuing competitive overfishing typically results in biological damage to the fish stocks and economic losses to the competing fleets.

In this context, one might imagine that reducing uncertainty would invariably be a good thing to do, but is that necessarily the case? Are there circumstances in which more information could be harmful? The talk will describe a stochastic game theoretic model of a bi-national fishery that has been applied to this, and related questions. Model simulation results suggest circumstances in which better information helps and others in which it can contribute to the destruction of the resource.

The presentation will conclude with a discussion of the role of science in the management of shared fish resources, and suggestions for improving the resilience of cooperation to natural shocks.