Extreme positions and are being adopted and incendiary language used on the issue of transferable quotas. The question of how quotas have become tradable legal rights in the UK, and whether this is a good or bad thing is being conducted, in heated terms, between those who see tradable concessions as a panacea for the failures of fisheries policy and those who see it as a type of crime. This debate is important because it touches the current discussion on the way forward for the under-10m fisheries within domestic fisheries policy but also the direction of CFP reform.
Fishing Concessions and Sustainable Fisheries
On the one side of the argument are the European Commission, Defra and parts of the environmental lobby, which see the allocation of fishing rights, or “fishing concessions”, as a way of achieving sustainable fisheries and breaking free from the “tragedy of the commons”. Their core argument is that allocating fishing rights gives the fishing vessel operators who receive them a vested interest in thinking long term and fishing in ways that preserves or increases their share of the resource, which in effect have become one of their assets. Without that vested interest, the argument runs, individual operators act in a short-term way to maximize immediate profit, leading to the degradation of the overall resource. This is a way in which private interest can be aligned with public policy, with the goal of well managed fish stocks within a healthy ecosystem. It is also seen as a way of dealing with the problem of fleet overcapacity and building a high level of compliance. Vessels that are not viable in a business sense may sell their quota entitlements to other vessels, reducing the capacity of the fleet overall and increasing the profitability of the remaining units. In Denmark this arrangement is said to have produced “happy fishermen, happy ex-fishermen and a happy government”.
Stealth Privatisation of a Public Resource
The counter-view, sometimes expressed in vigorous language by a mix of journalists, lawyers and single issue fishing groups, is that the introduction of this form of rights-based management amounts to the stealth privatisation of a public resource. “The biggest property grab since the Norman invasion” according to one over-excited legal commentator. Not only does the allocation of transferable quota shares enshrine and make permanent injustices already inherent in the quota allocations system, it has developed in the UK without a proper basis in law. The “commodification” of the fisheries resource amounts to a grab by the haves to the disadvantage of the have-nots that parallel the land enclosures in the 18th century. It is suggested that the whole process of quota ownership in the UK is shrouded in mystery that disguises the fact that quota traders –middlemen – or corporate groups outside the fishing industry could, or already do, hold large chunks of UK quota. Even the Government, it is claimed, don’t know or won’t reveal who ultimately owns UK quota.
