Protecting Marine Biodiversity: A Comparison of Individual Habitat Quotas (IHQs) and Marine Protected Areas

Kurt Schnier () and Dan Holland
Additional contact information
Dan Holland: Gulf of Maine Research Institute

No 2005.116, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: Fisheries managers in the United States are required to identify and mitigate the adverse impacts of fishing activity on essential fish habitat (EFH). There are additional concerns that the viability of noncommercial species, animals that are habitat dependent and/or are themselves constituents of fishery habitat may still be threatened. We consider a cap-and-trade system for habitat conservation, individual habitat quotas for fisheries, to achieve habitat conservation and species protection goals cost effectively. Individual quotas of habitat impact units (HIUs) would be distributed to fishers with an aggregate quota set to maintain a target habitat “stock” of EFH conservation. Using a dynamic, spatially explicit fishery simulation model we explore the efficiency and cost effectiveness of an IHQ policy versus alternative marine protected area (MPA) configurations, at reducing the risk of extinguishing a habitat dependent species of unknown spatial distribution. Our findings indicate that an IHQ policy with a conservatively established habitat target is better suited to the protection of non-target species than a rotating or fixed MPA policy.

Keywords: Fisheries management; Individual transferable quota; ITQ; Individual habitat quota; IHQ; Essential fish habitat; EFH; Marine protected areas; MPA; Non-target species (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q20 Q22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/w ... oads/NDL2005-116.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fem:femwpa:2005.116

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alberto Prina Cerai ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).