Closing the High Seas to Fishing: A Club Approach

Marine Policy (Forthcoming)

20 Pages Posted: 2 Mar 2020

See all articles by Jessica F. Green

Jessica F. Green

University of Toronto - Department of Political Science

Bryce Rudyk

New York University (NYU) - Guarini Center on Environmental and Land Use Law

Date Written: February 4, 2020

Abstract

The world’s fisheries are governed by a vast, and largely ineffective, set of international and regional institutions. If we are to preserve and manage what remains of the oceans’ fisheries, bolder solutions are needed. In this paper, we present a new approach: closing the high seas to fishing through the use of regulatory “clubs” – groups of states that willingly commit to a set of international rules. Closing the high seas will not only slow the pace of overfishing, but will also allow for the replenishment of stocks in countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) – the 200 miles from a nation’s coastline under its sovereign control. We consider four different clubs that provide two different excludable benefits: access to other club members’ markets, or to their EEZs. We contrast these proposals with two likely reforms under the current international legal system: amending the 1994 Fish Stocks Agreement to change catch quotas to zero, or extending the scope of the proposed treaty on Biodiversity Beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction to designate part or all of the high seas as protected areas. Of the six proposals, we find that a high seas ban club is optimal, in that it combines political feasibility with ambition. In this club, consumer nations would require producer nations to demonstrate proof that they are not fishing in the high seas in order to gain market access.

Keywords: governance; high seas; regulatory clubs

JEL Classification: F18, K33

Suggested Citation

Green, Jessica F. and Rudyk, Bryce, Closing the High Seas to Fishing: A Club Approach (February 4, 2020). Marine Policy (Forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3531845 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3531845

Jessica F. Green (Contact Author)

University of Toronto - Department of Political Science ( email )

Sidney Smith Hall
100 St George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://https://green.faculty.politics.utoronto.ca/

Bryce Rudyk

New York University (NYU) - Guarini Center on Environmental and Land Use Law ( email )

139 MacDougal St.
Wilf Hall 312
New York, NY 10012
United States
(212) 992-8105 (Phone)

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