EDFish

Selected tag(s): Oceans

Nobel Prize Winning Economist–Did She Really Take a Side?

By / Bio / Published: October 29, 2009

Diane Regas, Associate Vice President - EDF Oceans ProgramWhen Nobel Prize winners speak, people tend to listen. Recent economics prize winner Elinor Ostrom was cited “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.” The governance of the commons is exactly the problem we face in fisheries—in the United States and the world.

This week Dr. Ostrom has been quoted in the catch shares debate in New England—and the quotes did not sound to me like the work that Dr. Ostrom has done. So we at EDF asked her what she thought. Here is what she said:

“I am quite distressed to find that I am being characterized as supporting or opposing particular policies to manage fisheries in New England. To be clear, I have not taken a side in this debate.

“Fishermen and fishing communities all over the world are facing loss of the ocean resources that they depend on. What my work and the work of other scholars shows above all is that the issues involved in managing natural resources are complex. A range of approaches have worked in different places and under different circumstances.

“I have not yet had the opportunity to study the “sectors” approach in detail, and so do not have a view on how it is likely to perform. What we can be confident of is that reducing overfishing and achieving sustainability for the long run will require good-faith effort, hard work, and cooperation among local communities and government authorities.”

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U.S. and Cuba, Working Together to Protect Shared Resources

By / Published: October 27, 2009

Cuba lies just 90 miles from the tip of Florida. The two areas share a large expanse of ocean – and the huge array of biodiversity contained within it. That’s why EDF staffers are in Cuba this week to discuss ways to eliminate overfishing, protect coral reefs, conserve coastal areas, and tap potential ocean energy in our shared backyard.

Already, in September, EDF hosted a Cuban delegation in a move towards creating greater scientific exchange between the two countries. “The U.S. and Cuba share many ecological resources, but have different ways of managing them,” says EDF’s Dan Whittle. “Fishing, coastal development, and offshore oil and gas exploration in Cuba can have impacts in the U.S., and vice-versa. The sooner we work together to manage shared resources and find solutions to common problems, the sooner we’ll see benefits for the people, the environment and the economy in both countries.”

We’ll have a follow up post to report on the trip when our scientists return.

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First Woman Recipient of Nobel Prize for Economics, A Key Player in Ending the Race for Fish

By / Bio / Published: October 14, 2009

Elinor Ostrom, who shares this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics, laid much of the intellectual foundation for EDF’s current work with fishery cooperatives. Catch shares evolved from common property theory and empirical observations that, under certain conditions, resources such as fish, water, or pasture land tend to be overexploited when property rights are not clearly delineated. Ostrom’s research shows that resource users can develop cooperative methods to avoid overexploiting resources and dissipating wealth through competition. 

While some say that this idea “challenges” the conventional wisdom, research conducted by EDF’s Ocean Innovations suggests that competitive and cooperative dynamics depend on scale and the attributes of the communities themselves. Our results will soon be published in the Bulletin of Marine Science. This research and our experience with fishermen on the water motivates our work with the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association and the Morro Bay Community Based Fishing Association, two pioneering efforts to cooperatively manage fisheries. 

We believe that cooperative approaches can complement catch shares, which often apply at larger scales and to more industrial, less socially cohesive fishing communities. Such approaches are also broadly applicable in many developing countries, where social values are emphasized over individualism and economic gain, and where legal and political structures facilitate the delegation of resource use privileges to groups.

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U.S./Cuba History in the Making

By / Published: September 23, 2009

EDF Staff with Cuban delegates in Washington, D.C.Last week marked the beginning of a sea change in U.S. and Cuba cooperation on the environment. Our Oceans team invited and secured visas for a delegation of Cuban scientists to come to the U.S. for meetings with EDF and other partners. EDF has been working in Cuba for almost a decade to protect coral reefs, conserve mangroves and other vulnerable coastal ecosystems, and to conduct scientific research with our Cuban partners.

During this historic visit, EDF staff and our Cuban guests discussed future opportunities to collaborate, both in Cuba and the U.S. Of paramount importance are new projects aimed at protecting and sustaining fish populations and other shared resources in the Gulf of Mexico, northern Caribbean, and Atlantic.

Staff from our Climate and Air program and Land, Water and Wildlife program made presentations on their work and initiated discussions on possible collaborations on climate change and agricultural runoff. On Friday, the delegation traveled to Sarasota to meet with scientists from the Mote Marine Lab. Scientists from EDF and Mote are involved in a tri-national collaboration on marine sciences and conservation with our partners from Cuba and from Mexico.

Despite years of political separation, Dan Whittle, director of EDF’s Cuba Project says, “The environment knows no borders, and the resources we share are so important. We see the environment as the one issue that can bring the two countries together.”

Denise Stetten, manager of the Latin America and Caribbean Oceans Program at EDF says, “The spirit of the meetings was extremely positive and several important projects for collaboration emerged. We will be sure to follow through with those ideas and continue to build on our foundation of cooperation.”

News coverage of the visit:

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EDF Senior Scientist Successfully Works with South Atlantic Council to Safeguard Corals

By / Published: August 12, 2009

EDF Senior Scientist, Doug RaderSince 1998, EDF Senior Scientist Doug Rader has worked with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, marine scientists and fishermen to protect the ancient and fragile reefs against both fishing and non-fishing threats.  Working together, they designed a plan that safeguards the corals and also allows traditional fisheries in the reefs. 

A first for fishery councils in the United States, the plan strikes a novel and unique balance between achieving protection of critical habitat, while allowing fishermen to continue to have access to traditional fishing grounds with gears that do minimal damage.  The council is expected to give final approval to the entire habitat area in September.

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EDF Participates in Environment and Development Convention in Cuba

By / Published: July 15, 2009

Three fishermen, El Malecón, Havana, Cuba: Photo by MissMass (http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmass/)Last week, EDF’s Dan Whittle and Denise Stetten attended and presented at the 7th International Convention on Environment and Development in Havana, Cuba. The convention brought together scientists, government officials, entrepreneurs, NGOs, and others to discuss solutions to various issues, including environmental education, protected areas, environmental management, ecosystems and biodiversity management, and climate change.

Dan Whittle, EDF’s project director on Cuba, participated in the convention’s colloquium on environmental law, which focused on public participation in environmental decision-making. He also gave a presentation entitled “Shared Ecosystems: Opportunities for Increasing Environmental Cooperation and Collaboration,” in which Dan emphasized that partnerships between U.S. and Cuban scientists, NGOs, and government agencies can result in the production of better information that in turn should result in better policies and decisions.

Denise Stetten, Latin America program manager at EDF, also participated in the conference and worked with our Cuban partners on an assessment of coastal conservation in Cuba.

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