Thien Ly
GEO 210
Professor Brownlow
5/6/08
“Fisheries: Beyond the Crisis”
With new technology and the growing of industries, large corporations are now taking over many small businesses. The privatization of natural resources has created a big change in ecosystems around the world as well as the surrounding communities. As the large corporations begin to industrialize natural resources, local communities and cultures suffer due to the major depletion of the resources, which used to be their main source of income. Examples of this can be drawn from the case studies done in Nova Scotia and India about fishers and how industrialization has left the ecosystem and local communities in ruins.
In the case study done at the Bay of Fundi, over fishing by giant corporations have cause social unrest. As large foreign corporations begin to dominate the seas in Nova Scotia, small scale fisheries find their public right to fish violated. This was due to the over fishing done by large trolley factory fishing boats that highly privatized fishing and called for a government intervention. The crisis was interpreted as Tragedy of the Commons; therefore, policies were made in response to Tragedy of the Commons. In order to stop the depletion of fishes in the Bay of Fundi and to give local communities a fair share at fishing, the Fisheries Act was created. The Fisheries Act created the ITO or International Transferable Quota; this provided a quota for each individual that fished at the Bay of Fundi. The ITQs were supposed to save the ecosystem from depletion and give each individual equal opportunity at the fish market; the outcome, however, was quite the opposite.
Since the ITQs set for individuals were so limited, it became more expensive for local fisheries to fish than to stay at home. Therefore, most small scale fisheries sold or rented their ITQs to large corporations and became a deckhand for these companies. With the quotas set, companies neglected the...