William Forster Lloyd is not exactly a household name in St. John's, but perhaps he should be. One hundred and seventy years ago, he introduced the notion known to economists as the "tragedy of the commons." In a 1833 book on population, the English mathematician observed that, if everyone had free access to a common resource, that resource would soon be exhausted.  read more »

After decades of mercilessly laying waste to the East Coast cod fisheries, the federal government is poised to shut them down. The government has no choice: There is nothing left to plunder. It didn't have to end like this.  read more »

Six detailed case studies make up the balance of Political Environmentalism. Contributors Dean Lueck, Andrew Morris, Thomas Stratmann, Elizabeth Brubaker, David Gerard, Kurtis Swope, and Daniel Benjamin examine everything from the manipulation of hazardous-waste cleanup funds to the politics of wilderness designations.  read more »

By any reasonable measure the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy, the sickly sibling of its ailing Common Agricultural Policy, has failed. Created in 1971 to increase productivity, promote technical progress, open up access for European fishermen to all Community fishing grounds and "promote a fair standard of living" for fisherman, the CFP has netted the opposite result: Too many fishermen chase too few fish, fishing villages are as poor as inner-city slums, and competition from overseas markets is increasing due to technological advances in fish storage and shipping.  read more »

It appears that by opening the waters to the public, Opération Déclubage has caused, at least partly, the general decline in the quality of fishing in the province of Québec. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate that leaving the waters to the care of unaccountable managers leads to a decline in fish stocks, and that a clear system of private property rights is better suited to ensuring resource conservation – not just in Quebec but everywhere the opportunity exists for private river stewards to improve fisheries management.  read more »

On July 2, 1992, Canada’s fisheries minister banned cod fishing off the northeast coast of Newfoundland and off the southern half of Labrador. The northern cod stock, once one of the richest in the world, had collapsed. The moratorium on northern cod marked an unprecedented disaster for virtually all of Canada’s Atlantic groundfisheries - the fisheries for species that feed near the ocean floor.  read more »

How do fishermen behave? When holding clear rights, do they exploit fisheries recklessly or manage them sustainably? Can we trust them? Such questions are at the heart of the debate over the wisdom of establishing property rights in fish.
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How do fishers behave? When holding clear rights, do they exploit fisheries recklessly or manage them sustainably? Can we trust them?  read more »

We have a serious problem with fisheries in this country.  Anyone who has been reading the Ottawa Citizen over the past few weeks will understand a large part of the prob­lem: repeated failures in fisheries management, due in part to a failure by government bureaucrats and politi­cians to heed scientific advice and to learn from the past — a common ten­dency of governments, which the late historian, Barbara Tuchman, called "wooden-headedness."  read more »

The current debate over West Coast salmon, focusing on who should catch how many fish, has obscured another threat to salmon: habitat destruction.   read more »