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Graph B shows the same process, only now growth in biomass is plotted horizontally, showing again, that around the middle (half biomass), replenishment is fastest. The important conclusion is now, that if the amount of biomass harvested stays within the red curve (to the left of it), a state of balance will be reached, which is called sustainability. That balance can only just be achieved all along the red line; at the bottom with a minimum biomass and catch; at the top with a maximum of biomass and minimum catch; or in the middle with half the biomass and maximum catch. Fisheries managers refer to this point as Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), because that is exactly what it is, in the idealised situation.

However, the curve in the middle is rather flat, such that above and below it, MSY is not much less. Yet, by limiting the biomass to no less than 70% of maximum, one can have both MSY and an amount of precaution. The reason fisheries do not do this, is partly greed, and partly because fish stocks (biomass) are very difficult to assess, and because fishermen move from one stock to the next.

Since biomass, when eaten, converts to energy, which is spent to eat more food, the amount of effort to catch food, can be plotted in the same diagram (blue line, graph B). What the line says, is that more food can be obtained if more effort to catch it, is spent. It also says that in order to survive, one must catch more energy than one expends, which is the area between the blue line and the red curve. Shown in graph C, it has a profit side (blue) which turns into a loss side (red), because the prey becomes harder to catch as their numbers dwindle. Natural predators (in general any exploiter) have evolved to function in the survival blue area, before its peak, in such a way that spending extra effort is rewarded generously. Now don't forget that the blue line is not that of one predator, but that of a population of predators. So it includes both their population size and their cumulative effort. It can now be seen, that predation stabilises both the prey population and the predator population.

First it must be noted that each predator has specialised in its kind of prey, not because of preference, but because it has evolved to do so, for economic reasons. A predator able to live off a fast growing prey population, would be ill equipped to live off a slow growing population. Watch how the blue line won't intersect the green dotted line. A large predator would waste too much energy catching small prey, but apparent exceptions exist (whales have the 'technology' to fish small prey efficiently).

Graph D takes graph C and turns it around, but remember that the left side of the diagram corresponds to maximum biomass (full), and the right side with minimum biomass (empty). We can now compare various kinds of predator, and their effects. A shark is a cold blooded animal, and a very efficient swimmer. Because of its energy efficiency, a shark can live off a large range of prey, including slow growing species. Watch how the shark line intersects both the red and the purple curves economically.

By comparison, graph E shows that of a dolphin. It is warm blooded, and spends an enormous amount of energy when it doesn't hunt. Its energy expenditure curve therefore, starts way up the vertical axis. If it had the same catching efficiency as the shark (dotted blue line), it would not be able to feed on the red population, requiring faster growing stock instead (purple population). Fortunately, it has developed the technology of sonar, which gives it an advantage over the shark, pulling its energy curve flatter. Because of this advantage, the dolphin can now feed on the red stock.

When it comes to humans, the situation is totally out of proportion. Instead of energy along the vertical axis, we now have money. People are silly enough to pay many times the energy value of their food. It allows fishermen to spend massive amounts of fossil fuel to chase the last fish. Their fishing technology is so superb that it lays the blue effort line almost flat, and although their boats are expensive, the line does not start high up the vertical axis like it does for dolphins. Subsidies lower it too. So people are able to fish a stock down, without any natural stabilisation occurring. To make matters worse, as the fish becomes rare, their price goes up, which lifts the red curve up towards the right. So, for the fisherman, fishing has become 'economic' until the fish stock is depleted so much, that recovery becomes doubtful. Herein lies the tragedy of present-day overfishing.

The diagram on right illustrates typically what happens to a fishery, in this case the snapper fishery in Franklin County (USA). The blue line shows how, after a period of fluctuating returns (possibly caused by extinguishing several fish stocks) around 1968, the stock was suddenly fished down. But as the catches declined, the price went up. In the end, fishermen made more money out of the depleted stock than before. The green dotted line shows how price soared ten-fold in 30 years.

It can now also be understood that subsidies have the effect of drawing the blue effort line further down, thereby making the situation worse. Many other problems can be understood from the economics of populations, as discussed here: growing crops, grazing, disease epidemics, disease control, etc. Use this as a tool to further your understanding of a resource and its problems.

Fisheries management world-wide has failed, because:

• the economies of exploitation as explained here, were not sufficiently understood.
• scientists do not understand fishing. Fishermen follow schools and fish them out, then move on to new schools. Dolphins and other predators do likewise. It makes economic sense. However, scientists measure stock (correctly) by making random trawls. Stock numbers measured this way are lower than those indicated by fishing effort, which causes fisheries managers to err on the wrong side.
• data of the resource is hard to get while being exploited. The stronger the fishing effort, the more we measure that, rather than the reaction of stocks to fishing. In a situation of fishing at Maximun Sustainable Yield, it is virtually impossible to obtain data of how the fish stocks behave naturally. This is a natural principle, often overlooked, and it is a strong argument in favour of fishing precautiously, well below MSY, with stock levels not below 70%.
• scientists underestimate the advantages of modern technology. Fishing effort is highly subsidised by cheap fuel. The catch per unit effort (CPUE) is not a good indicator of fish stock levels, but is widely used for this.
• scientists underestimate the demand for fish. High prices encourage depletion of the stock.
• modern fisheries are naturally unstable. There is no stabilising point where returns are discouraged economically, while retaining a healthy biomass.
• fishermen are driven by greed, and the necessity to pillage the commons. If they don't, someone else will. They are also driven by uncertainty. What is there today may not be there tomorrow.
• governments encourage overfishing to repay debt by earning overseas exchange. Worldwide subsidies amounted to US$90 billion agains catches valuing US$ 70 billion (UN FAO).

• slow growing species are caught at the same ratio as fast growing ones, resulting in old and large fish disappearing. The ratio of large to small fish may prove to be a better indicator of overfishing than all others.
• by-catch (unwanted catch) can cause severe damage to stocks in the following ways. Average by-catch is estimated at 25% of the global catch. In New Zealand the bycatch during snapper trawling is 200%; that of trevally trawling 300% (Spirits Bay trawl fishery)
• it is discarded, thrown overboard. A short-circuit of the food chain.
• economic discards: the portion of a catch that is not of economic value and therefore not rational to retain.
• regulatory discards: what regulation prohibits retaining; undersized fish; fish over quota or for which no quota is held.
• high-grade discards: discarded because of its lower value and because limits exist and more was caught. It is similar to market-induced regulatory discards.
• it contains high numbers of juvenile fish, as if killing tomorrows catch.
• it is highly damaging to slow growing species, particularly for birds (albatros) and dolphins.
• by fishing a single stock down, its function within its environment disappears, throwing other population relationships out of balance as well.

sustainability: (L: sub=before/ under; tenere= to hold) the ability to support for a long time period; endurance; the ability to keep going continuously. Resource sustainability  means to be able to use the resource forever, without depletion, or causing harmful effects.

• benefit: both to society and the miner. The mining venture's profitability pays for extraction, whereas society pays for the product. Costs trickle through the entire economy.
• availability: almost without exception, resources are used by people, and need to be transported from the mine. The closer the mine to where the product is used, the more valuable is the resource. The quality of the ore determines how much effort (and energy) is involved in purifying (washing + grading) it to high standards.
• cost: costs are incurred all the way. Environmental litigation and resource consents add to it too.
• sustainability: means a number of things:
• sustainability of the resource: extraction rate not to exceed renewal rate, or the resource being so abundant that extraction can proceed for many hundreds or thousands of years.
• sustainability of extraction: benefits must outweigh costs. Often public subsidies are used or required to make extraction possible.
• sustainability of supply: supply must be guaranteed over a number of years, in order to justify the setting up costs of mining, processing, marketing, wholesaling, retailing and industrial use. Supply must also be assured in order to win contracts.
• alternatives: when considering a mining consent application, society must ask what alternatives are available:
• alternative locations: the resource may be available elsewhere, perhaps in more preferable quantities, or where nuisances caused by the extraction will be felt less.
• alternative methods: are alternative methods of extraction available? What are the merits of each?
• alternative resources (resource substitution): can other resources take the place?
• minimising environmental damage: Only very recently has society added this condition, which usually amounts to minor concessions in the way things are done. Eventually, the external costs of environmental damage may be taken into account (e.g. by taxation), resulting in a higher price, which in turn may help to conserve the resource.
• a precautionary approach: where in doubt, through lack of knowledge, society is to take enough precaution, in order to avoid irreparable damage. It often involves extensive monitoring of possible effects and cumulative effects, which ripple through the fabric of the environment.
• monitoring: by monitoring the effects of extraction and behaviour of the resource, insight can be obtained, which can help to better manage the resource.

Businesses or Limited Liability Companies were once created to limit the undertakings of a business in such a way that its owners could not be held responsible (for bankruptcy and debt, e.g.). In doing so, businesses were given human rights as well, in all practical sense being the same as a person in legal matters. As a result, human rights have become business rights, resulting in claims for compensation for loss of property of opportunity by laws, even if those laws limited their wrongdoings!

Because people have been doing something for some time, they feel it their traditional right to keep doing so. Many native peoples (Indians, Maori, etc.) insist that they should be allowed to continue their ways, even if those ways are detrimental to the environment or to others. Curtailment of traditional rights often requires society to compensate generously.

In order to encourage prospecting for minerals and mining for them, governments have given miners draconian mining rights to do whatever they like, to the detriment of local land owners and communities.

Part of the path to nationhood took the right of tribes away to manage their resources themselves. In its place came a system of open access, giving everyone the right to exploit what once belonged to a community. The tragedy of open access to fisheries is now too well known. The open oceans are still a free-for-all, including their minerals. Who gets there first, obtains the right. Where open access has been managed with quotas, a new form of rights has crept in, inviting for compensation claims, when such rights are being curtailed to save the fishery.

As nations wanted to have a say about their fishing resources, Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) were created along the borders of all sea nations. In these zones, fishing is restricted so that nations have exclusive fishing rights. This gave them a better chance to manage their fish stocks. However, a clause in the UNCLOS agreement remains that if a nation does not fish its resources to the (sustainable?) maximum, other nations have the right to do so for them. Fishermen now use this clause to get their way, to obstruct conservation measures and to claim compensation for such.

Trading agreements such as the WTO (World Trade Organisation), and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) aim to encourage free trade 'for the benefit of nations', but such trade agreements can cynically be regarded as a (rich country's) means of securing access to (poor countries') resources, at rock-bottom prices. Any measure for environmental or resource conservation can now be interpreted as unlawful obstruction of free trade, and can be challenged in a secret trade tribunal whose decision is binding. We've created an overruling regulatory authority which is not accountable, non-democratic, and whose officers cannot be elected!

The above-mentioned obstacles to resource and environmental conservation cannot be underestimated, as judged by the many lawsuits and the huge claims awarded. Here are some recent examples:

As resource management and environmental protection are cast in law, the courts take over, and discretion, common sense and fairness are lost. The huge costs of litigation is eventually borne by the public in the form of higher prices, while at the same time, conservation takes a back seat. Let's nonetheless look at problems and how we solve them.
 

http://www.roskill.co.uk/ for the metals and minerals markets, but you have to pay a LOT for access. Information is money.

Environmental problems are not entirely new, but whenever they occur, one can be sure that they have in one way or another, been caused by people. But why is it that they have become pressing only recently? The answer is quite simple. Look at the diagram. It shows two situations, that of a world of plenty, less than a century ago, and that of a world of scarcity today. In the distant past, the amount of the biosphere used by people, was negligible to the total amount available. There seemed to be so much remaining. But nowadays, many scientists agree that we have already overstepped the halfway point. So doubling our use of the biosphere will no longer be possible. And as the remaining part of it (used by 10 million other species) becomes smaller, the ecoservices they provide, such as cleaning up after us, become less, and thus our problems worse. The mathematics of scarcity are scary, predicting an infinity of problems at infinite cost (like run-away global warming).

In the near future (and perhaps forever), we can expect our problems to get worse in the following ways:

• more of: we will see more different kinds of problem. New problems will present themselves with regularity.
• more frequent: problems will appear more frequent, reappearing with the natural cycles of our environment. First every 30 years, then every ten, then every year and so on.
• more intensive: our problems will become more intensive, as the cumulative effects of our actions become felt. At first we will notice acute problems, such as acid rain and chemical pollution, but gradually the slower ones will announce themselves. These are at the same time larger in magnitude and almost incurable (global warming, droughts, etc).
• more complicated: the results of our actions will affect larger and larger systems, while at the same time affecting more and more of the biosphere.

• difficulty: ecological knowledge is difficult to assimilate, because it involves many organisms and factors. It is often counter-intuitive in the way one would expect them to work.
• looped-back systems: because effects work back to their causes (looping back), ecosystems are difficult to understand and to study. Problems can cause new problems, or existing problems to grow larger.
• wide vision: a wide vision, experience and knowledge is necessary to study and understand ecosystems. It requires a multi-disciplinary approach.
• complicated: natural ecosystems are complex. Disturbances to such systems are not easy to understand, and they may indeed respond in a chaotic way.
• no experiments: ecosystems are large and specific to their locality. They cannot be taken into the laboratory to be experimented on. As a result, it is difficult to do controlled experiments. An experiment done in one part of the world cannot be duplicated in another part, because environmental conditions are specific.

This drawing shows how resource extraction has changed from our distant past to that of today. The lefthand diagram shows a family or tribe going fishing to feed themselves. It was a stable form of extraction, involving negative feedback: by eating the fish, the motivation to fish (hunger) disappeared. However, a slight positive feedback induced the population to grow. Eventually such growth led to overpopulation and natural population crashes. Their cycle is about 500-1000 years.

In modern times, however, families and tribes are fishing for money. All feedback loops have become strongly positive, leading to explosive exploitation. Success in fishing brought in money, which motivated more fishing for more money. In the process, many others joined in. Collapse happens in a matter of years or decades, rather than centuries. So what caused the transition from the stable form into the unstable one?

Listed in the middle of the diagram are all the human-invented strong accelerators (red), and a few remaining inherited (natural) weak moderators (blue).

• trade: the invention of trade made it pay to fish for others outside the tribe. By trading fish, the tribe could obtain other goods.
• money: the invention of money greatly facilitated trade. Money can be saved and does not rot.
• open access: as nations formed, tribal authority yielded to national governments and the ocean was opened up to free access by all. It paved the way to the tragedy of the commons. If you didn't fish to the maximum, someone else would.
• technology: technology changed the way we do things, beyond compare. For fishing, the invention of cooled storage and transport meant that one could build up fish stocks for later sale, and transport the fish further afield. At the same time, motors replaced sail, and cheap fuel allowed ships to pull large nets at speeds from which no fish could escape. It allowed us to fish further out to sea and trawl nets with awsome precision. It allowed us to find fish schools, and to fish them out, one by one. Technology allowed one to catch the last fish economically.
• free enterprise: free enterprise demands no meddling by governments. It insists on the freedom to make the largest possible profit from the advantages obtained by inventiveness and technology. To catch all the fish makes economic sense.
• free markets: free markets insist on the freedom to buy and sell without restriction to any place on the globe. It has made every resource extraction a global issue, competing on the global market, and supplying a large market. Prices first dipped due to competition, forcing fishermen to catch what they could; but as the resource became scarce, prices soared, and so did demand, resulting in increased profitability and the incentive to catch the last fish.
• free investment: the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and NAFTA demand free flow of capital and investment and any intervention is seen as illegal intervention. It allows foreign capital to own national means without being accountable.

• self sufficiency: the desire to provide for local communities, drives fishermen towards caution, but this motivation is very weak due to the tragedy of the commons.
• scarcity: eventually scarcity of the resource will make its extraction uneconomic. But because of the damage done, the resource may never recover.
• self preservation: having foresight and being involved with the resource every day, fishermen may collectively decide to change their ways and introduce conservation measures. Examples of this can be found. However, governmental support with regulations is almost always required as well (to make others comply too).
• guilt: the guilt felt towards future generations. Also a weak motivator.
• regulation: the most powerful and ONLY effective measure is regulation. With regulation, all stakeholders can be made to comply, thereby removing the tragedy of the commons. Regulation can be visionary and proactive, which means that it can act before the resource shows signs of depletion. The reason that even regulation has failed in most fisheries, is that the say of stakeholders is too dominant, and because scientific stock management is very poor.

We tend to look at a problem as if it appeared out of the blue, and then we set out to fix it, usually with technology and cheap energy (or money). Seldom do we fix the real causes of our problems, so let's have a closer look at them. In this diagram the path of a problem and its traditional solution is shown.
When we ask scientists to solve a problem, we expect them to work at their level only, often specified by terms of reference or by a limited scope. The scientists then observe the problem, collect data, analyse it and come up with a solution, which is supposed to reduce the problem (green steps in the diagram).
However, each problem originates from people who have a perceived need, and then do something to fill that need (action). Without much scientific knowledge, society can bring alleviating influence to bear on these three preceding stages. We can change the way we do things, even why we need to. Education appears to be the best tool for this, but laws can be established to achieve the same. What is important to remember, is that to every problem these three preceding stages exist, which can be altered to prevent problems, without recourse to additional knowledge. So they can work more quickly while costing less money. They are also more lasting.

Note! Eventually, a section on problem solving will appear on this web site. The above are some of the important points, relating to resource management.