A recent editorial in The Economist unfairly downplays and depersonalizes the fraught process of transitioning fishery management to catch shares, glossing over the fact that it can destabilize and threaten fishers’ livelihoods. Communities where these changes have been implemented can spiral into bitterness, economic havoc and sometimes, violence.
Is that so surprising? How easy would it be for you to take a pay cut, change everything about the way you did your job, and submit to rules that stripped you of the way of life that had supported your family for generations – in return for the uncertain promise that the resource on which you depend will “likely” rebound in the future? That is a brutally personal risk to take.
I agree that enacting policies to shift incentives for individual fishers do work. But to suggest that these shifts are no-brainers, or that fishermen are stonewalling because they just don’t get it, or are simply greedy, is downright careless and disrespectful.
Read the complete opinion piece from Triple Pundit.