Hare or Tortoise? Trade-offs in Recovering Sustainable Bioeconomic Systems

Type Article
Date 2010-12
Language English
Author(s) Martinet Vincent1, Thebaud OlivierORCID2, 3, Rapaport Alain4
Affiliation(s) 1 : UMR INRA AgroParisTech, F-78850 Thiverval Grignon, France.
2 : IFREMER, UMR AMURE, Brest, France.
3 : CSIRO Marine & Atmospher Res, Cleveland, Qld, Australia.
4 : INRA, UMR INRA SupAgro MISTEA, F-34060 Montpellier, France.
Source Environmental Modeling & Assessment (1420-2026) (Springer), 2010-12 , Vol. 15 , N. 6 , P. 503-517
DOI 10.1007/s10666-010-9226-2
WOS© Times Cited 14
Keyword(s) Sustainability, Recovery strategies, Multicriteria approach, Optimal and viable control, Bioeconomic modeling, Fisheries economics
Abstract In this paper, we develop a framework for (a) the study of sustainability of dynamic bioeconomic systems and (b) the definition of recovery paths from unsustainable situations. We assume that the system follows a sustainable trajectory if it evolves over time within a set of multidimensional constraints. We use the mathematical concept of viability to characterize sustainability. Recovery paths are studied with regards to their duration and their acceptability. This general framework is applied to the issue of recovering sustainable fisheries. We define sustainability in a fishery as the requirement that a set of economic, ecological, and social constraints is satisfied at all times. Recovery paths are characterized by the time required to obtain sustainable exploitation conditions in the fishery and by the acceptable recovery costs for fishermen. In particular, we identify the recovery path which minimizes the time of crisis under a minimum transition profit constraint. We then describe the trade-off between speed and accepted costs of recovery paths, by comparing "Hare"-like high-speed-high-cost strategies to "Tortoise"-like low-speed-low-cost strategies. We illustrate our results by means of a numerical analysis of the Bay of Biscay Nephrops fishery.
Full Text
File Pages Size Access
15 1 MB Access on demand
Author's final draft 30 3 MB Open access
Top of the page