The School of Economics invites you to a join Sydney Development Economics and AERE Reading Group seminar by David Kaczan (World Bank). 

Management and/or investment? Modelling the costs and benefits of reform in Indonesia’s fishery sector

Abstract

Indonesia is second only to China as the world’s largest fishing nation. However, management limitations, particularly regarding a large and diverse small scale fleet, have led to overfishing in more than a third of the country’s stocks. Infrastructure deficiencies further hamper post-harvest value-addition and access to some higher value export markets. To address these issues, public and private investments have been made to alleviate supply chain constraints, and a new system of area-based management is under development. However, optimizing the mix of investment and management choices is challenging given the interactions between these types of interventions. Improved management can provide long-term returns through improvements in biomass and productivity, but places short-term costs on fishers. Value-chain investments can increase value per-fish landed and thus returns, but in the absence of appropriate management measures, encourages increased fishing pressure that impacts stocks. We hypothesize that a coordinated strategy of improved management and value-chain investment has the potential to both raise economic returns in the long term, by ensuring socio-economic benefits based on a sustainable and productive resource, and reduce potential short-term costs of fishery recovery. We use a bioeconomic model of select stocks in Eastern Indonesia to demonstrate these effects and identify intervention combinations that optimize economic outcomes. This presentation covers work in progress undertaken as part of World Bank technical support to governments for natural resources management.

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Important note: This is a hybrid event and will also require a password to access the online seminar. Please email the event organiser – Dave Mc Manamon (dave.mcmanamon@sydney.edu.au) for access.