Jan 16 2012
Common access resource case study – Indonesia’s Reef Fish
Published by Jason Welker at 11:26 am under Environment,Market failure,Sustainability,Tragedy of the Commons
This week we’ve been exploring the issues of common access resources and how they give rise to a market failure. The video below illustrates the tragedy of the commons in Indonesia’s fish populations.
The high demand for fresh seafood from Southern China and Hong Kong create demand for Indonesia’s reef fish species. Over the last decade, the fish stocks around the more populated Western islands of the archipelago have all but disappeared, so today fishermen have brought their unsustainable methods to the Eastern islands of Indonesia, using dynamite and cyanide to stun fish, which are then caught live and rapidly transported to the markets in China for consumption. According to some estimates, Indonesia’s fish stocks are declining by 30% per year, a rate at which they will be depleted within the next decade.
This poses several problems for both the consumers and producers of fresh fish. For the Chinese consumers, the increasing scarcity of fish in the next decade will mean rising prices and, eventually, the death of the market altogether. For Indonesian fishermen, the outcome is more dire; a loss of their livelihood as the fish stocks dry up.
This raises the question: Why do fisherman continue to use these unsustainable methods? Of course, in a competitive market with thousands of fisherman, if one individual chooses to fish using sustainable methods (using hook and line, for example), he risks catching fewer fish than the competition using cyanide and dynamite. Fewer fish mean less income and a lower standard of living. The rational thing for each individual fisherman, therefore, is to catch fish using the most productive method available. The tragedy of this is that the highest yielding methods are unsustainable, as the story explains, and before long the fish will be exploited to extinction.
The organization profiled in the video is using education to encourage fisherman to use sustainable methods to catch fish. Unfortunately, I fear this will not be enough to save the wild fish stock of Indonesia. The Indonesian government must intervene in the market to enforce strict catch limits, perhaps employing a permit scheme that would allow fishermen to buy and sell permits to catch a strictly controlled quantity of fish during a fishing season.
As it stands, however, Indonesia’s dwindling fish stocks demonstrate yet another example of the tragedy of the commons. Without clear property rights or management by a government, the common resource of Indonesia’s reef fish will continue to be exploited unsustainably, leaving future fishing communities with fewer sources of income and future consumers with less variety of fish to consume and enjoy. The resource is over-exploited today, to the gain of today’s consumers and fisherman, at the expense of future generations.
About the author: Jason Welker teaches International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement Economics at Zurich International School in Switzerland. In addition to publishing various online resources for economics students and teachers, Jason developed the online version of the Economics course for the IB and is has authored two Economics textbooks: Pearson Baccalaureate’s Economics for the IB Diploma and REA’s AP Macroeconomics Crash Course.
Jason is a native of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and is a passionate adventurer, who considers himself a skier / mountain biker who teaches Economics in his free time. He and his wife keep a ski chalet in the mountains of Northern Idaho, which now that they live in the Swiss Alps gets far too little use. Read more posts by this author28 Responses to “Common access resource case study – Indonesia’s Reef Fish”
[…] Common access resource cast study – Indonesia’s Reef Fish […]
Well its really good,indonesian government should take some effective step for concervation of fishes.And sustainable method should be used by fisherman.
It’s not easy to sustain in the tight competition in the fishing profession, so most of the fishermen try to find out the cheap worms for sale that can be used for luring big prays, and increase their profits.
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Common access resource case study – Indonesia’s Reef Fish | Economics in Plain English