In Europe, total allowable catches (TAC) are divided up into national quotas based on a fixed percentage of the stock.
Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ)
ITQs assign property rights to fishing companies so that fishermen have ownership to certain parts of the ocean and thus have a greater incentive to take care of it and engage in sustainable fishing. This ownership can be bought and traded, which means fishermen new to the industry would have to buy their way in.
ITQs are allotted as a percentage of a nation's total allowable catch (TAC). This is advantageous for larger fishing companies, which have high profits and can afford to purchase more ITQs; critics say this will lead to monopolies in the industry, but it may be a good thing for the environment, since owning more of the "ocean" leads to more efforts to keep fishing sustainable. On the other hand, large fishing companies tend to be more destructive and produce more pollution and damage with their large fleet than local fishermen, who tend to be more sustainable but will not be able to compete with the larger companies.
Problems with ITQs
- discourages local sustainable fishermen
- companies still more focused on the short term profits instead of long term consequences
- quota is for one year, so if companies overfish, instead of stopping, they try to buy more quotas
- companies tend to throw away unwanted fish
ITQs are used in New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Canada and the U.S.
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1995/04/mm0495_04.html
(second article)
---> should we enforce quotas on an international level? should it be an international law for countries to have ITQs?