The Property and Environment Centre (PERC) has published a research and policy paper that takes a radical look at the whole subject.

Much has been written by scholars at PERC and elsewhere on the successful application of property rights to coastal marine fisheries in New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. The use of individual transferable quotas allocated to fishers has been shown to help overcome the environmentally and economically destructive race to catch fish, a problem that has plagued government-regulated ocean fisheries for years.

These programs are typically executed in a top-down manner by a government agency in charge of fisheries management. As such they rely not only on adequate capacity and management skills but also on supportive political economy conditions that include the rule of law, a reliable system of monitoring and enforcement, and broad-based political representation to ensure increased accountability of public officials.

The paper concentrates on three developing countries: Chile (is it still developing?), Bangladesh and Indonesia but the lessons might well apply to others, especially those that have been devastated by the CFP and will, one day, have to rebuild their fishing industry.