Economic policy, institutions and fisheries development in
the Pacific†
Dr Elizabeth Petersen
Research Fellow
Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program
Research School for Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Ph: +61 2 6125 4953
Liz.Petersen@anu.edu.au
ABSTRACT
The South Pacific is home to the world’s largest and most valuable tuna fishery.
Despite this, the Pacific island countries have found it tremendously difficult to
capture significant economic rents from the resource. It is argued in this paper that
poor economic policy partly explains this. However, poor policies are preventing the
implementation of strong, cost-effective institutions for the governance of the fishery
which, coupled with strong institutions for broad social and economic governance, are
required for development of the industry. Opportunities for policy reform that is likely
to lead to significant gains from the fishery are highlighted.
Abbreviated article title: Fisheries policy in the Pacific
Key words: fisheries policy, institutions, tuna
JEL codes: O13, Q22, Q28
Paper presented to the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Agricultural
Economics Association, July 28-31, Longbeach, California
† The research was completed while the author was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Centre for
Development Studies, the Australian National University. She is grateful to Ron Duncan who provided
many helpful comments, and AusAID for their generous financial support.
1
1.
Introduction
The negotiation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982
(which was not ratified until 1994) substantially increased the responsibility of
resource-adjacent governments to manage and conserve fish stocks within their
exclusive economic zone, the ocean area within 200 miles of their coastline (United
Nations 1994). This increased responsibility is no more extreme than fo