Lake Victoria Fisheries:
Policy
Conflicts Induced by Predator-Prey Relations
Gardner Brown
- Professor of Economics (Emeritus), University of Washington
Seminar Abstract
:
Economic efficient resource use
is just one policy goal. Foreign exchange earnings, employment for women and
healthy people are other goals promulgated by Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda in
the management of Lake Victoria Fisheries. That these social goals are in
conflict is vividly portrayed in the bioeconomic predator-prey model where
favoring a particular species (goal) reduces the sustainable harvest of another
species (goal). Species interdependence is increasingly important to understand.
However, traditional concepts such as maximum sustained yield take on a new
meaning. To be operational, fishery biologists and other researchers must
choose an explicit value for each fish, a rate of exchange.
Readings:
Kitchell, J. [et al.]. 1997
. The Nile Perch in Lake Victoria: Interatcions between predation and
fisheries. Ecological Applications.
Solow, Robert M., 1991
. Sustainability: An Economist's Perspactive.
Gordon, H. Scott. 1954
. The economic theory of a common property resource: the fishery. Journal
of Political Economy.