A blogger for Forbes has criticised what he sees as a terrible mismanagement of one of Iceland’s most abundant resources: its fish.
Tim Worstall, writing on his blog, refers to news from Bloomberg, which says in part that Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir seeks to “limit the ability to rent or sell fishing quotas in a revamp of the nation’s 1984 fishing law.”
Worstall likens Iceland’s fishing resource to the “Tragedy of the Commons”; when there is common access to a resource, and demand for it begins to exceed what the resource can regenerate, you have to put limitations on the access.
He praises Iceland’s fishery management system up until this point, but takes exception with this latest move, saying:
But it looks like Iceland wants to remove from their fisheries management system exactly the thing that makes their fisheries management system work. That very ability to sell or rent the fishing rights, that very point of their being private property in the first place.
Which is very depressing when you think about it. One of the few places which has actually managed to deal with, solve, a serious environmental problem has decided to gut the very system which has done so.
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