Opinion: Tragedy of the Commons
Measures for the promotion of fisheries sector are in the right direction but the problem of overfishing persists
By Dr Aishwarya Harichandan, Kanhaiya Kumar
The fisheries sector, considered the sunrise industry of the Indian economy, recorded the highest average decadal growth of 8.9% (FY 2014–23) among allied sectors under agriculture. With a record-high fish production of 174.45 lakh tonnes in 2023–24, India is the world’s second-largest fish-producing nation, accounting for around 8% of the global fish production. This sector employs 30 million people. Under the motto ‘Reform-Perform-Transform,’ the government aims to further develop the sector as a crucial means of achieving Viksit Bharat by 2047.
Taking this as the context, it is important to identify the threats that this sector faces. One of the serious threats that it encounters is that of overfishing. According to a study by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in 2022, of the total fish stock in India, 4.4% is subject to overfishing, 8.2% is overfished and 0.7% is rebuilding.
Overfishing
Fisheries are self-renewable in nature. Unlike mineral resources, if the marine resources are well managed, their duration is practically unlimited. However, fisheries are susceptible to the tragedy of the commons. This means that everyone in a bid to maximise their utility tends to overuse the common property resource, thereby leading to its exhaustion or degradation. This phenomenon is best explained by the statement “freedom in a common brings ruin to all.” With respect to fisheries, the tragedy of the common leads to overfishing. It is necessary to look at how the problem of overfishing can be addressed.
Conventionally, the management of fisheries is done through top-down approaches where the power to make rules is concentrated in the hands of the government. This includes creation of marine reserves, control over times of access, norms of distribution of harvest and restriction on catch. However, all this leads to a “race to fish.” Due to control over the time of access and since the supply is constrained, there is an over-investment in fishing vessels. The fishermen try to catch as much as possible during the limited time, leading to the supply being more than the demand.
As a result, there is excess fish in the market which requires adequate processing for it to be sold throughout the year. This leads to high processing costs due to the perishable nature of the harvest and deterioration in the product quality.
Addressing the Problem
The conventional management techniques have not been very successful ie, neither could they conserve the fish stocks nor generate the highest rate of return. In such a scenario, it becomes imperative to look at alternative methods like community-driven and rightsbased approaches.
• Community-driven Approach
Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom advocated for participatory bottom-up approaches for the management of the commons. She showed that when natural resources are jointly owned, rules are established for their use in a way that is both economically and ecologically sustainable.
Several fishing communities in India have demonstrated this. For instance, the Ashtamudi Clam Fishery in Kerala faced severe overfishing in the early 1990s, causing the annual catch to drop from 10,000 tonnes to half that amount within two years. In response, local fishers, guided by scientists, implemented sustainable practices: closing the fishery during the peak breeding season, setting a minimum size limit for harvestable clams and banning mechanical fishing. As a result, catches have stabilised at around 10,000 tonnes. In 2014, the Ashtamudi fishery became India’s first to receive the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, boosting market prospects in Europe and the US.
• Rights-based Approach
The broad application of the rightsbased management regimes is based on property rights and “limited access privileges” in the ocean, which can provide incentives to resource owners to protect marine resources rather than destroy them. Though only a small fragment of world fisheries has administered the property rights regime till now, it has been triumphant wherever adopted. Its application has led to elevated fishery profits due to the elimination of unnecessary effort in terms of overinvestment in fishing vessels and the elimination of processing costs. It has also ensured a fresh supply of catch in the market year-round, resulting in improved product quality.
The most notable property rights approach is “individual catch share” such as Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), Individual Vessel Quotas (IVQs) and Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs), depending on the way they are administered. The regimes are competitive and efficient, where the catch share is tradable. Under IFQs, each quota holder is allowed to catch a specified percentage of the TAC (total allowable catch) that is set by fishery managers each season. These IFQs are transferable such that the quota holders can adjust the size of their fishing operations by buying and selling quotas.
The marine environment also extensively benefits when there is a shift from traditional management to a property rights approach. Firstly, it reduces bycatch, which is a major concern. Secondly, catch share regimes also address issues such as seafloor degradation, coral destruction and other damages caused due to bottom trawling, dredging and trapping. For instance, the Alaska Halibut fishery, where the IFQs led to the above results.
Sustainable Development The importance of fisheries is evident from the fact that SDG 14 specifically talks about conserving and using the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. Conventional ways of addressing the problem of overfishing have not been very successful. Effective measures include the rights-based and community-based approaches, including investing in natural resources. All these require effective monitoring. In India’s case, the measures for the promotion of the fisheries sector are in the right direction, however, all the stakeholders should also be alert to the problem of overfishing.
(Dr Aishwarya Harichandan is Assistant Professor of Economics and Business Environment at IIM Sirmaur, Himachal Pradesh. Kanhaiya Kumar is Indian Forest Service probationer at Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, Dehradun. Views are personal)
