Tag: conservation

Using Markets to Make Fisheries Sustainable

Around the world, over-fishing is leading to severe depletion of valuable fisheries.  This is as true in U.S. coastal waters as it is in many other parts of the world.  In New England waters, for example, after two decades of ever more intensive fishing, the groundfish fishery has essentially collapsed.  But, we are not alone.  According to the United Nations Environment Program, fully 25 percent of fisheries worldwide are in jeopardy of collapse due to over-fishing.  Clearly, something needs to be done.  Yet, what has long been considered the obvious answer – restrictions on fishing – has been shown time and time again to be the wrong answer.  The right answer is enlightened use of markets.

The fundamental cause of the depletion of fish stocks is well known to economists:  virtually all ocean fisheries are “open-access,” that is, fishermen – small operations or large corporations – can fish all they want.  These individuals and companies are no more greedy than the rest of us, but because no one holds title to fish stocks in the open ocean, everyone races to catch as much as possible.  Each fisherman receives the full benefit of aggressive fishing (that is, a larger catch), but none pay the full cost (an imperiled fishery for everyone).  One fisherman’s choices have an effect on other fishermen (of this generation and the next), but in an open-access fishery – unlike a privately-held copper mine, for example – these impacts are not taken into account.  What is individually rational adds up to collective foolishness, as the shared resource is over-exploited.  This is the “tragedy of the commons.”  What to do?

Government intervention is, alas, required.  Fishermen don’t welcome such regulation in their economic sphere any more than anyone else does.  And they have a point.  Conventional regulatory approaches have driven up costs, but not solved the problem.  And we know why.  If the government limits the season, fishermen put out more boats.  If the government limits net size, fishermen use more labor or buy more costly sonar.  Economists call this over-capitalization.  Costs go up for fishermen (as resources are squandered), but pressure on fish stocks is not relieved.

The answer is to adopt in fisheries management the same type of innovative policy that has been used for decades in the realm of pollution  control – tradeable permits, called “Individual Transferable Quotas” ( ITQs) in the fisheries realm.  Sixteen countries – some with economies much more dependent than ours on fishing – have adopted such systems with great success.  New Zealand regulates virtually its entire commercial fishery this way.  It’s had the system in place since 1986, and it’s been a great success, putting a brake on over-fishing and restoring stocks to sustainable levels ­- while increasing fishermen’s profitability!

There are several ITQ systems already in operation in the United States, including for Alaska’s pacific halibut and Virginia’s striped-bass fisheries.  More important, the time is ripe for broader adoption of this innovative approach, because a short-sighted ban imposed by the U.S. Congress on the establishment of new ITQ systems has expired.

The first step in establishing an ITQ system is to establish the “total allowable catch.”  The next step – and a crucial one – is to allocate shares of that total limit to fishermen in individual quotas that are theirs and theirs alone (read:  well-defined property rights).  Setting the individual quotas will not be easy.  The guiding principle should be simple pragmatism – using the allocations to build political support for the system.  Making the quotas transferable eliminates the problem of overcapitalization and increases efficiency, because the least efficient fishing operations find it more profitable to sell their quotas than to exploit them through continued fishing.  If you can’t catch your whole share, you can sell part of your quota to someone else, instead of buying a bigger boat.

In addition, these systems improve safety by reducing incentives for fishermen to go out (or stay out) when weather conditions are dangerous.  And it was just such perverse incentives of conventional fisheries regulation that were blamed for the tragic loss of life when a fishing boat was lost in a storm off the New England coast just a few winters ago.

Further, because ITQ systems eliminate the motivation for government to limit the duration of the fishing season, supplies available to consumers improve in quality.  Prior to the establishment of an ITQ system for Alaskan halibut, for example, the government had reduced the fishing season to just two days, but subsequent to the introduction of the system, the season length grew to more than 200 days.

A decade ago, environmental advocates – led by the Environmental Defense Fund – played a central role in the adoption of the sulfur dioxide allowance trading program that’s cut acid rain by half and saved electricity generators and rate-payers nearly $1 billion annually, compared with conventional approaches.  The time has come for environmentalists to join forces with progressive voices in the fishing industry and in government to set up ITQ systems that can keep fishermen in business while moving fisheries onto sustainable paths.

Share

As Reservoirs Fall, Prices Should Rise

Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency and warned of possible mandatory water rationing as the state struggled through its third consecutive year of drought. This well-intentioned response to the latest water crisis should not come as a surprise.

Whenever prolonged droughts take place — anywhere in the United States — public officials can be expected to give impassioned speeches, declare emergencies, and impose mandatory restrictions on water use. Citizens are frequently prohibited from watering lawns, and businesses are told to prepare emergency plans to cut their usage. A day after the restrictions are announced, the granting of special exemptions typically begins (as in Maryland a few years ago, when car washes were allowed to remain open even if they were not meeting conservation requirements).

The droughts eventually pass, and when they do, water users go back to business as usual, treating water as if it were not a scarce resource. Water conservation efforts become a thing of the past, until the next drought, until the next unnecessary crisis. Isn’t there a better way?

The answer is yes — if we are willing to treat water as a valuable resource and price it accordingly, so that people have incentives to use the resource wisely, especially in times of need.

In 1776, Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations the apparent paradox that water is absolutely vital to human existence but is sold for no more than a pittance. More than two hundred years later, I can refill an eight-ounce glass 2,500 times with water from the tap for less than the cost of a single can of soda. Under these conditions, it is hardly surprising that we have so little incentive to conserve our scarce water supplies.

Throughout the United States, water is under-priced. Efficient use of water will take place only when the price reflects the actual additional cost of making that water available. Lest one fear that higher water rates would mean that Americans would go thirsty, take note: On average, each of us uses 183 gallons of water a day for drinking, cooking, washing, flushing, cleaning, and watering, but less than 5% of that is for drinking and cooking combined. There is plenty of margin for change if people are given the right price signals.

Fifty years of economic analyses have demonstrated that water demand is responsive to price changes, both in the short term, as individuals and firms respond by making do with less, and in the long term, as they adopt more efficient devices in the home and workplace. For example, when Boulder, Colorado moved from unmetered to metered systems, water use dropped by 40% on a sustained basis.

But prices are typically set well below the social costs of the water supplies, since historical average costs are employed, rather than true additional (marginal) costs of new supplies. Although water scarcity typically develops gradually across seasons of low rainfall and low accumulations of snow pack, pronounced droughts are usually felt in the summer months of greatest demand. The economically sensible approach is to charge more at these times, but such “seasonal pricing” is practiced by less than 2% of utilities across the country.

A reasonable objection to jacking up the price of water is that it would hurt the poor. But we can take a page from the play book of electric utilities who subsidize the first kilowatt-hours of electricity use with very low “life-line rates.” Indeed, the first increment of water use can be made available free of charge. What matters is that the right incentives are provided for higher levels of usage.

Other innovative possibilities exist. For instance, we have learned that the generation of electricity can be separated from its transmission and distribution — and that generation is a competitive business. Similarly, the supply of water to municipal systems can also be made more competitive, and hence more efficient. The Western states have been the first to innovate with water markets because of their greater scarcity concerns.

An example much in the news in recent years in California involved the sale of water conserved by Imperial Valley farmers to the water authorities in Los Angeles and San Diego, following a blueprint pioneered 20 years ago by Thomas Graff, then a staff attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund and now a living legend in the environmental community. These markets can address water shortages in droughts without mandatory restrictions on use or rationing, and without the need to construct new, expensive, and environmentally damaging dams and reservoirs.

Droughts, like so many public policy dilemmas, present both challenges and opportunities. Inevitably, citizens and businesses do their best to cope with mandatory restrictions. And with equal inevitability, once droughts have passed and the restraints are lifted, they return to their previous habits of water use and abuse.

The next water “crisis” when it comes will therefore present an opportunity to refuse to return to business as usual when the drought has passed. Instead, the affected areas can introduce progressive water pricing reforms that will send the correct signals to individuals and businesses about the true value of this precious resource. In my next post, I will focus on some specifics of implementing better water pricing, drawing on work I’ve done with Professor Sheila Olmstead of Yale University.

Share