World Fisheries A Tragedy Of The Commons

Winner of the 2017 Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association Although humans have long depended on oceans and aquatic ecosystems for sustenance and trade, only recently has human influence on these resources dramatically increased, transforming and undermining oceanic environments throughout the world. Marine ecosystems are in a crisis that is global in scope, rapid in pace, and colossal in scale. In The Tragedy of the Commodity, sociologists Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark explore the role human influence plays in this crisis, highlighting the social and economic forces that are at the heart of this looming ecological problem. In a critique of the classic theory “the tragedy of the commons” by ecologist Garrett Hardin, the authors move beyond simplistic explanations—such as unrestrained self-interest or population growth—to argue that it is the commodification of aquatic resources that leads to the depletion of fisheries and the development of environmentally suspect means of aquaculture. To illustrate this argument, the book features two fascinating case studies—the thousand-year history of the bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean and the massive Pacific salmon fishery. Longo, Clausen, and Clark describe how new fishing technologies, transformations in ships and storage capacities, and the expansion of seafood markets combined to alter radically and permanently these crucial ecosystems. In doing so, the authors underscore how the particular organization of social production contributes to ecological degradation and an increase in the pressures placed upon the ocean. The authors highlight the historical, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape how we interact with the larger biophysical world. A path-breaking analysis of overfishing, The Tragedy of the Commodity yields insight into issues such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change.

For over twenty years, an alarming trend has emerged in the world’s fisheries: there are too many fishers chasing too few fish. This book provides a broad overview and fundamental reassessment of fisheries management policies around the world.

An analysis of how responsive governance has shaped the evolution of global fisheries in cyclical patterns of depletion and rebuilding dubbed the “management treadmill.” The oceans are heavily overfished, and the greatest challenges to effective fisheries management are not technical but political and economic. In this book, D. G. Webster describes how the political economy of fisheries has evolved and highlights patterns that are linked to sustainable transitions in specific fisheries. Grounded in the concept of responsive governance, Webster's interdisciplinary analysis goes beyond the conventional view of the "tragedy of the commons.” Using her Action Cycle/Structural Context framework, she maps long-running patterns that cycle between depletion and rebuilding in a process that she terms the management treadmill. Webster documents the management treadmill in settings that range from small coastal fishing communities to international fisheries that span entire oceans. She identifies the profit disconnect, in which economic incentives are out of sync with sustainable use, and the power disconnect, in which those who experience the costs of overexploitation are politically marginalized. She examines how these disconnects shaped the economics of expansion and documents how political systems failed to prevent related cycles of serial resource depletion. Webster also traces the increasing use of restrictive management in response to worsening fisheries crises and the emergence of new, noncommercial interests that demand greater management but also generate substantial conflict. She finds that the management treadmill is speeding up with population growth and economic development, and so concludes that sustainable fisheries can only exist within a sustainable global economic system.

Illuminating the conditions for global governance to have precipitated the devastating decline of one of the ocean’s most majestic creatures The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is the world’s foremost organization for managing and conserving tunas, seabirds, turtles, and sharks traversing international waters. Founded by treaty in 1969, ICCAT stewards what has become under its tenure one of the planet’s most prominent endangered fish: the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Called “red gold” by industry insiders for the exorbitant price her ruby-colored flesh commands in the sushi economy, the giant bluefin tuna has crashed in size and number under ICCAT’s custodianship. With regulations to conserve these sea creatures in place for half a century, why have so many big bluefin tuna vanished from the Atlantic? In Red Gold, Jennifer E. Telesca offers unparalleled access to ICCAT to show that the institution has faithfully executed the task assigned it by international law: to fish as hard as possible to grow national economies. ICCAT manages the bluefin not to protect them but to secure export markets for commodity empires—and, as a result, has become complicit in their extermination. The decades of regulating fish as commodities have had disastrous consequences. Amid the mass extinction of all kinds of life today, Red Gold reacquaints the reader with the splendors of the giant bluefin tuna through vignettes that defy technoscientific and market rationales. Ultimately, this book shows, changing the way people value marine life must come not only from reforming ICCAT but from transforming the dominant culture that consents to this slaughter.

To date, research on the economic implications of climate change on fisheries has been both limited and fragmented. The contributors to this volume remedy the lack of attention by investigating the economic consequences of pelagic fish fluctuations in the recent past in order to understand how to adapt and respond to future climate changes.

"For the past five years, the lobster population along the coast of Maine has boomed, resulting in a lobster harvest six times the size of the record catch from the 1980s ... [This book] follows three lobster captains ... as they haul and set thousands of traps. Unexpectedly, boom may turn to bust, as the captains must fight a warming ocean, volatile prices, and rough weather to keep their livelihood afloat. The three captains work longer hours, trying to make up in volume what they lack in price. As a result, there are 3 million lobster traps on the bottom of the Gulf of Maine, while Frank, Jason, and others call for a reduction of traps ... Maine lobstering towns are among the first American communities to confront global warming, and the survival of the Maine Coast depends upon their efforts. It may be an uphill battle to create a sustainable catch as high temperatures are already displacing lobsters northward toward Canadian waters--out of reach of American fishermen"--

Filled with many examples of topic issues and current events, this book develops a basic understanding of how the natural world works and of how humans interact with the planet's natural ecosystems. It covers the history of ecology and describes the general approaches of the scientific method, then takes a look at basic principles of population dynamics and applies them to everyday practical problems.

This biennial report sets out a comprehensive review of world fisheries and aquaculture, as well as examining selected policy issues including capture-based aquaculture, labour standards, fisheries management and CITES, trade issues, depleted stocks recovery, deep-water fisheries, production forecasts to 2030, fisheries subsidies, and fishing capacity. Findings include that developments in world fisheries and aquaculture during recent years have continued to follow the trends that were already becoming apparent at the end of the 1990s, with capture fisheries production stagnating, aquaculture output expanding and growing concerns with regard to safeguarding the livelihoods of fishers and the sustainability of both commercial catches and the aquatic ecosystem from which they are extracted.