Fishing in the Commons: The Effect of Non-Governmental Organizations’ Actions on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing

Abstract

Overfishing in ocean waters beyond governmental control presents a potential example of the Tragedy of the Commons, the dilemma that individuals, acting to serve their own interests, will deplete resources that should be shared and conserved. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing) has contributed to the decline of this important resource, and over a third of fishing stocks are now overfished. Elinor Ostrom developed design principles that identify circum-stances in which cooperative communities of resource users can establish rules to prevent resource depletion and created the Social-Ecological Framework to provide the basic vocabulary of roles, concepts, and variables to organize an analysis of common-pool resource problems. Ostrom’s design principles suggest that community cooperation will not prevent unsustainable fishing in ocean waters, and in those areas far from shore, there is little effective government enforcement to prevent IUU fishing. This study uses the Social-Ecological Framework and a multi-pronged quantitative approach to consider whether, despite these challenges, three types of actions by non-governmental organizations have been effective at reducing IUU fishing. It finds that each of the actions have been effective and that IUU fishing has declined, both because of the non-governmental organizations’ actions and by government efforts.