ThursdayFriday
April 29-30, 2004
102 Fishery Sciences
(auditorium)
Rodney M. FujitaSenior Scientist, Oceans Program, Environmental DefenseFinancing the Transition to Rights-Based Management: An Investment in the Future |
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Support for rights-based fisheries management is strong in many countries and appears to be building in others. However, legitimate concerns with such management systems must be addressed if they are to meet fishery management, conservation, economic, and social objectives. These include concern with who allocates the rights, and how they are allocated; concerns with the nature of right (whether it is a compensable right or a revocable privilege to use public trust resources); and concerns with adverse social, cultural, and economic impacts of unconstrained transferability of the rights.
The key to resolving these important issues is to create processes for constructive dialogue and negotiation that engage a broad spectrum of interests, represented by people who are committed to the process. However, too often the government lacks the financial and human resources to support good planning and decision-making processes in addition to the costs of administration, enforcement, and research. In fact, many good resource conservation and management laws and regulations already on the books are not being implemented fully or at all owing to a lack of funding.
Because rights-based systems require the government to confer upon individuals or groups exclusive privileges to profit from public trust resources, cost recovery from the industry for some or most of the development, incubation, and implementation costs of such systems is justifiable and fairly common. However, capital is scarce in many fisheries impoverished under open-access or limited-access management. New sources of funding are needed to support robust processes for developing rights-based management regimes, and to incubate new rights-based fisheries. Over the mid- to long- term, rights-based management is likely to ease budgetary pressures that presently constrain the implementation of ocean conservation and management more generally by requiring the (more profitable) industry to bear most of the costs of fishery management, enforcement, and research (with strong government oversight), freeing up government funds for other purposes.
Dr. Fujita obtained his doctorate in marine ecology in 1985 from the Boston University Marine Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He has conducted research there, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and at Oregon State University. Fujita then worked at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, where he became one of the first scientists to conduct research while living on an isolated research platform several miles offshore of Key Largo, Florida.
Dr. Fujita joined Environmental Defenses staff in 1988. He has worked on a wide variety of issues, including acid rain, ozone depletion, global climate change, and protecting marine ecosystems. He served as an advisor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and to nongovernmental organizations in efforts leading up to the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. He also helped to develop the award-winning Environmental DefenseAmerican Museum of Natural History exhibition, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, which toured the USA.
Dr. Fujita focuses on understanding and protecting the ocean. As a member of Environmental Defenses multidisciplinary Oceans Program team, he leads efforts to create sustainable fisheries along the US Pacific coast. He is currently working to stop overfishing, to transform failing fisheries into profitable ones, and to create networks of marine reserves that protect marine biodiversity and ecosystem health. He played a lead role in establishing the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which included the creation of one of the strongest water quality protection programs in the country and one of first no-take marine reserves in any of the National Marine Sanctuaries. Dr. Fujita also worked with a group of environmentalists to establish one of the worlds first science-based networks of marine reserves around Californias Channel Islands. To spread the word about ocean conservation, he has helped to develop the Monterey Bay Aquarium's exhibition Fishing for Solutions, lectured widely to diverse audiences, and authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, reports, and popular articles.
Dr. Fujita has been appointed to many state and federal commissions and review panels on environmental issues, and has served as a consultant to various National Academy of Sciences panels. He has testified before Congress several times on ocean policy issues and was recently appointed to the National Marine Protected Areas Advisory Committee. In 2000, Dr. Fujita was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation to explore emerging issues in marine conservation and to write Heal the Ocean.
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