Institutional uncertainties in international fisheries management

Around the world, many commercial fisheries are in crisis. The failure of the traditional management models, centered on calculations of maximum sustainable yields (MSY) from individual species or stocks has complicated efforts to come to terms with this situation. A growing emphasis both on interdependencies in large marine ecosystems (LMEs) and on the non-linear or chaotic changes that are prominent features of these systems highlights the biophysical uncertainties affecting fisheries management. Less familiar is the proposition that efforts to manage fisheries are affected by institutional uncertainties as well. These uncertainties stem from: (1) contradictions embedded in fisheries regimes as an outgrowth of institutional bargaining, (2) vague or ambiguous formulas arising from the pressures of negotiation processes, (3) the complexity of specific institutional arrangements, (4) gaps between regimes on paper and regimes in practice, (5) compliance problems, (6) linkages between individual fisheries regimes and other international institutions, and (7) limited capacity to forecast how fisheries regimes will evolve over a period of time. Not all institutional uncertainties are bad. The existence of a thick 'veil of uncertainty,' for example, may contribute to the development of successful fisheries regimes by giving participants incentives to pay attention to considerations of fairness. But any effort to manage international fisheries effectively must reckon with the existence of institutional as well as biophysical uncertainties in this realm. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.