Climate Change Impact and Structural Reforms in Kiribati
KIRIBATI
Mediterranean, Antarctic and Indian Ocean, where responsibilities of states to contribute and
cooperate in the protection are defined within international conventions and agreements.
13.
The creation of new MPAs to achieve the 30 percent global coverage may lead to
temporarily higher fishing pressure and threaten sustainability. According to McDermott et al.
(2019), fishing pressure can be expected during a preemptive harvesting phase following new MPA
announcements (the so-called Blue Paradox). On a global scale, the percentage of fisheries
experiencing overfishing would increase from the currently estimated level of 65 percent to a level
of 72 percent. While this would not affect Kiribati directly, it may be indirectly affected if its
neighboring countries partake, establish, or enlarge their MPAs.
14.
Different fishery management regimes can greatly impact sustainability. Costello et al.
(2016) simulated global fishery prospects under alternative management regimes from 2011
onwards, when biomass was estimated to be very low and catch levels too high. In the
business-as-usual scenarios, including with a conservation concern, fishery stocks would continue to
collapse, while sound reforms could regenerate biomass and lead to an increase in annual catch
levels and substantially higher profits. This includes fisheries management with a maximum
sustainable yield (MSY) target (F/FMSY reference limits) and a rights-based fishery management
(RBFM) regime. Specially, the study finds that the RBFM policies could achieve the highest levels of
biomass, while the MSY policies will ultimately generate the largest catch but have lower fish
biomass, lower profits, and slower recovery times. If reform efforts are put in place, the median time
to recovery would be just 10 years, and by 2050, the vast majority (98 percent) of stocks could be
biologically healthy.
15. Fisheries management schemes with transferable fishing rights-such as the
VDS- incentivize marine conservation. Villaseñor-Derbez, Lynham and Costello (2020) note that
benefits from the large-scale MPAs typically accrue to other countries than to the one establishing
the MPA or to the high seas. However, with transferable fishing rights through trading, tracking of
vessels, and a biomass-based allocation rule, conservation can work, as evident from data presented
in the previous section on the PIPA fishery sustainability. On the other hand, a fisheries trading
mechanism based on past catch would result in substantial losses for countries with MPAs as it
would grant more fishing rights to countries that fish the most. However, if a conserving country can
trade the rights of spillover of fish from its MPA to waters of its neighboring countries, as with the
VDS scheme, 88 percent to 99 percent of revenue losses can be avoided. It displaces, but does not
reduce, overall fishing effort (Gruby et al., 2020). Hence, these studies support the VDS as a viable
and well-designed fishery management scheme for countries with MPAs, such as Kiribati.
16. The marine spatial planning (MSP) can be an alternative to make a large MPA work
but entails a series of challenges and tradeoffs. The MSP is a process of developing a blueprint
for area-based management that accounts for multiple management objectives. It can be an
important tool to achieve ecosystem-based management (EBM) of marine systems
7 Overall, the global median fishing mortality F/FMSY equaled 1.5 (overfishing is occurring) and biomass B/BMSY
equaled 0.78 (stocks are overfished).
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