NCMC Conservation News

APRIL 30, 2008

HIDDEN SUBSIDIES

The first commandment of ocean fishing—National Standard #1 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act—says that we shall conserve and manage our fisheries to produce the “optimum yield,” defined as “the greatest overall benefit to the nation.” The word “overall” is key and inevitably the object of much conflict.

There are competing benefits, often between the recreational and commercial fishing industries, and sometimes within those industries. Because of the hard-to-quantify social benefits attached to each, it isn’t as simple as comparing dollar values. In addition, the benefits of achieving certain yields from fishing must also, according to law, be weighed against the value of “protecting marine ecosystems,” an even more difficult balance that requires comparing apples and oranges.

The considerable expense of managing fisheries—administration, regulation, research, data collection, monitoring and enforcement– is not a cost of doing business for the fishing industry. It is, rather, the nation’s investment in fisheries and the economic and social benefits (jobs, seafood, recreation, etc.) they produce.

Yet these expenses are not accounted for in the cost-benefit analyses that are part of the optimum yield equation. Given the unrelenting demand for bigger budgets to support increasingly complex regulations, expanded scientific studies, and sophisticated, real-time at-sea monitoring, perhaps it is time we factor them in.

More Trouble Than They're Worth?

A new study by the University of British Columbia estimates that the world’s governments subsidize ocean fisheries at $30-34 billion a year, with at least $20 billion of that contributing to overcapacity and overfishing. That, the study says, equals a quarter of the landed value of the global fish catch. Add to that the resulting costs of controlling overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks, and the value shrinks even more.

The United States has gotten away from direct subsidies to the fishing industry (although low-interest loans still exist, as do “good” subsidies related to safety and health). In 2007, Congress passed resolutions calling on the U.S. to seek an international ban on government subsidies that are supporting overfishing. Negotiations are underway at the World Trade Organization, and the U.S. is among a group of nations pushing for an agreement to eliminate harmful subsidies.

We applaud the nation’s leadership on this issue. Such an agreement would, as the environmental group Oceana points out, lessen incentives to fish beyond sustainable levels, reduce overfishing and other destructive fishing practices (most notably the highly-subsidized bottom trawl fleets), and create a fairer playing field for U.S. fishermen who fish shared stocks and/or compete in the same markets.

But we submit that when management costs are so high as to cut deeply into a fisheries economic benefits, it amounts to a form of subsidy. Achieving the greatest overall benefit to the nation requires that we assess and consider these hidden costs when deciding what fishing is optimum. We might find that some fisheries or methods of fishing are more trouble than their worth.