The most appealing point from Hardin’s classic paper is that we cannot expect ones to have consciousness over what lies beyond oneself. Furthermore, comparing whether ones is more mindful than the other is simply obscure or even imperceptible (Hardin, 1968). Although the contexts was in regard to breeding and laissez-faire population growth, this idea has deeper and broader context that is much relatable to a lot of environmental degradation problems we are facing today. We cannot expect someone not to swim in the lake in a lovely summer, and when it is over-crowded, the lake ecosystem is likely to be degraded than the original state. When it’s damaged, no one would want take responsible of it, even if the damage is mutual for their future uses. The same way we cannot expect any fishermen not to take as many fish as they want in the sea–no matter how the number have shown that the sea is heavily damaged, no matter how fiercely the environmental campaigns have taken place–because each of the fisherman persists to their own justifiable reason, ignoring the fact that they are actually wrestling at mutual cost: discounting each other’s future profit. This is precisely the underlying rationale of why fisheries, and a lot of other natural resources, turn into tragedy; because we refer only to our interests and wouldn’t pick up on something that no one else wants to actually spare and pick up, at our cost.
It leads to further question: What makes fisheries so appealing for the fishermen to exploit? What is the underlying reason for human to take as many as possible? And why haven’t anyone succeed to restrain fishermen–even they have failed to restrain themselves–from taking too much?
In order to fully comprehend the problem, I will divide my analysis into three parts: (1) the nature of the goods; (2) the nature of human (and its action); and (3) the challenges of policy-making. In part (1) will mostly be about understanding the fisheries properties. The next part, we will see deeper on the human behavior of economically rational decision-making, both individually and collectively (as markets). In connecting the dots, the first two parts will shed the light on the core complication of fisheries over-exploitation problem and provide a basis for policy-making as well as rooms to improve.
Being a renewable resource, fisheries have the ability to breed and biologically have exponential natural rate of growth; so naturally speaking, the number of fish in the sea is abundant–to the extent the harvesting rate doesn’t exceed the natural growth rate, known as maximum sustainable yield (Maddison, 2016). Beyond this point, the ‘unlimited’ number of fish is capable of being exhausted due to its property: open-access.
Open-access resources refer to the resources in which accessible to all and property rights are endowed to individuals; so individuals are ‘free’ to exploit based on their individual utility i.e. free competition among them. Common goods, a property I mentioned earlier, and open-access resource are likely to be likened together, but in fact they are quite different in definition. Common goods refer to the goods or resources in which property rights are endowed to community; so the social norms are binding to the community as the rational amount of exploitation. Remarking the absence of binding norms in open-access resource, the rational amount of exploitation is then based on each of the fisherman’s interest of appropriating the profit and that is why the resource are much likely to be exploited (Perman et al, 2011, p. ). Common goods and open-access are relatable in the sense that they are subject to human rationality, to be utilized for our needs and benefit that sometimes doesn’t take into account unjustness.
Being accessible to all also signifies that there is no barrier that could restrain fishermen from taking as much fish in the sea, so that fisheries are non-excludable. In this case, fisheries hold the properties of public goods with the existence of free-rider problem (Perman et al, 2011, p. ).
Having all of these properties, the evidence shows that the world fisheries capture is four times bigger in 2014 than in 1950 base on the figure below from FAO’s 2016 report. The larger capture is generated by larger percentage of biologically unsustainable catch, that is from only approximately 10 percent in 1974 rises to 31.4 percent in 2013 (FAO, 2016, p. 5). Instinctively, the increase is aligned to the increase in the number of people to be fed, with almost three times bigger population in 2014 than in 1950 (GeoHive, no date). Aside than that, larger vessels and technology advancement in harvesting techniques obviously increase the capacity to catch.
What, then, drives human to over-exploit? The answer is plain and simple: because we are economically rational agent and fisheries are subject to human rationality. Rational decisions are the decisions that are made, given one’s constraint, to maximize utility or satisfaction or profit. The underlining point is that we only refer to our best interest. The lesson we learn from Hardin (1968) is that self-interest leads to tragedy for collective wealth.
What is appealing for the fishermen to take as much fish they can carry is that it yields no economic rent (Perman et al, 2011, p. ), or in other words, apart form the cost generated from the effort of catching the fish, it’s ‘free’ so the rational decision would be to appropriate the profit. Dan Ariely (2009) in his book “Predictably Irrational” identified that generally, human behave differently if dealing with goods that has zero relative price i.e. ’free’ goods. When a good doesn’t have ‘value’, we tend to underestimate its existence and it’s hard for us to see the true worth. In the fisheries problem, although fishermen bear the cost of harvest, it is relatively much lower than it supposed with zero economic rent, due to the abundance. For decades, the idea of ‘free’ fish lingered and this is how over-exploitation happens, until we are confronted by the fact that it’s getting harder to catch the fish, which also means higher cost.
At this stage, the rational thing to do would be to redistribute current and future profit through curbing the catch; however they are reluctant to do so because markets tend to view the importance of their future profit the same way we view the welfare of our children–one important point from Solow (1974). If we have higher tendency to view our welfare to be more important than our children’s, then markets see future profits are less important than the current profits. It leads to further thinking: the current resource exploitation is more important than the future environmental stability in markets’ eyes. This explains largely why we tend to overlook the sequence of consequences in longer terms generated on each of our decisions. Then again, Hardin is right; we cannot expect one to bear the consciousness beyond one’s individual concerns.
There are large number cases where the policy imposed has low rate of cooperativeness. What provokes this uncooperative behavior?
Fishermen are actually aware of the needs to restrain and conserve for long-term, but the opportunity costs are too high (Hsu, 2005). Open-access generates too much uncertainty over the availability of the stock of fish today due to natural occurrences that may distort the natural growth of fish (Maddison, 2016) and, in much larger degree, due to rivalry between players (Hsu, 2005). Technological advancement–larger vessels and improved nets–makes it possible to capture larger number of fish per catch and thus reduce the portion of catch for other players. Moreover, the tendency to cheat, if players agree to cooperate, is very high and that “…every player knows that every player knows this.” (cited in Hsu,2005, p. 81).
Indonesian fishermen knows very well how high this opportunity cost is, especially in rivalry with illegal fishing which costs US$21.6 billion of loss each year (The Jakarta Post, 2016). With opportunity cost this high, over-exploitation is even more intense and it is almost impossible to enforce any policy. But the government is reluctant to combat illegal fishing because it includes neighboring countries sovereignty. Although the law clearly allows to attack any ship crossing territorial border illegally, it diplomatically means attacking the country of origin. It is evident that fisheries problem includes multitude of interagency complication, which is another difficulties.
Besides that, the burden of transaction costs clouded the government to enforce effective monitoring, and agreement with fishermen; and the fishermen to meet the condition. For example under the new 2014 presidency, the ministry of fisheries forbid transshipment at sea to control and data the amount of fish that caused huge fishermen loss due to additional cost of docking with long queue and rotten fish because many ships do not have cold storage facilities (The Guardian, 2015).
The government may also deviate from its effective function due to institutional capture (Perman et al, 2011, p. ) and corruption in the background. The major players in fisheries need to maintain its profit and access, especially given the fact that illegal fishing rules, thus they need the policy-maker to favor them. Often in the process, bribery takes place rowing from the port officer, local government, along to the ministry of fisheries (Detik Finance, 2016).
No wonder local fishermen unwillingly cooperate, after all the ‘cost’ they have spent, because they believe it isn’t fair for them to hold back; they rather go in full speed to exploit. Confronted with all the damage, they would blame other players. This behavior marks the difficulty evidence of governing the commons: of self-serving notions of fairness and the human propensity to blame resonated by Barton H. Thompson (2000, cited in Hsu, 2005).
Taking into account the open-access and non-excludability property, how human behave given the opportunity of profit, and the market perception of its current and future profit, we now see what we and the policy-makers are facing.