The Blue Paradox: Preemptive Overfishing in Marine Reserves
PAPER The blue paradox: Preemptive overfishing in COLLOQUIUM marine reserves Grant R. McDermotta,1,2, Kyle C. Mengb,c,d,1,2, Gavin G. McDonaldb,e, and Christopher J. Costellob,c,d,e aDepartment of Economics, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403; bBren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; cDepartment of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; dNational Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138; and eMarine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Edited by Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, and approved July 25, 2018 (received for review March 9, 2018) Most large-scale conservation policies are anticipated or an- This line of reasoning suggests that the anticipation of a new nounced in advance. This risks the possibility of preemptive conservation policy may give rise to a set of incentives that is resource extraction before the conservation intervention goes distinct from—but possibly just as important as—the incentives into force. We use a high-resolution dataset of satellite-based fish- arising from the policy’s implementation. While this kind of pre- ing activity to show that anticipation of an impending no-take emptive behavior has been well-documented for landowners, gun marine reserve undermines the policy by triggering an unin- owners, and owners of natural resource extraction rights, it has tended race-to-fish. We study one of the world’s largest marine not been studied in the commons. For vast swaths of the ocean, reserves, the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), and find that no single owner has exclusive rights and so must compete against fishers more than doubled their fishing effort once this area was others for extraction.
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