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ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access published online on April 30, 2008
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsn070
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© 2008 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Published by Oxford Journals. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Fuel price increase, subsidies, overcapacity, and resource sustainability

Ussif Rashid Sumaila1, Louise Teh1, Reg Watson1, Peter Tyedmers2 and Daniel Pauly1

1 Fisheries Centre, Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory (AERL), University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada
2 School for Resource and Environmental Studies (SRES), Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

Correspondence to U. R. Sumaila: tel: +1 604 822 0224; fax: +1 604 822 8934; e-mail: r.sumaila{at}fisheries.ubc.ca

Sumaila, U. R., Teh, L., Watson, R., Tyedmers, P., and Pauly, D. 2008. Fuel price increase, subsidies, overcapacity, and resource sustainability. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65.

Global fisheries are currently overcapitalized, resulting in overfishing in many of the world’s fisheries. Given that fuel constitutes a significant component of fishing costs, we expect recent increases in fuel prices to reduce overcapacity and overfishing. However, government fuel subsidies to the fishing sector reduce, if not completely negate, this positive aspect of increasing fuel costs. Here, we explore the theoretical basis for the expectation that the increasing fuel prices faced by fishing enterprises will reduce fishing pressure. Next, we estimate the amount of fuel subsidies to the fishing sector by governments globally to be in the range of US$4.2–8.5 billion per year. Hence, depending on how much of this subsidy existed before the recent fuel price increases, fishing enterprises, as a group, can absorb as much as this amount of increase in their fuel budget before any conservation benefits occur as a result of fuel price increases.

Keywords: fisheries subsidies, fuel subsidies, global fisheries

Received 8 August 2007; accepted 24 March 2008.


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