The Economics of Overcapacity and the Management of Capture Fishery Resources: A Review

This paper has its origins in a paper prepared by the author for a 1998 EU sponsored workshop, having the title: Overcapacity, Overcapitalization and Subsidies in European Fisheries (Munro, 1999). The author’s workshop paper drew heavily upon a FAO project with which he had been involved, on the management of fishing capacity, a project that was to give rise to the FAO International Plan of Action on Managing Fishing Capacity (FAO, 1999).¹

Over the intervening decade, the issue of overcapacity in capture fisheries has been brought into sharper focus by calls for a massive resource...