From Conservation to Commodification? A Comparative Analysis of Quota-Based Fisheries Governance in Indonesia, Iceland, and New Zealand
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22437/12a0dn73Keywords:
blue justice, harvesting entitlements, measured fishing policy, coastal-state authority, regulatory safeguards.Abstract
Background: Quota-based fisheries management aims to reconcile stock conservation with efficient access, yet harvesting entitlements may evolve from public allocations into asset-like interests. International lawof the Sea provides conservation frameworks but does not mandate private rights or quota markets. MethodologyThis research employs a qualitative doctrinal-comparative design, combining doctrinal interpretation, content analysis, comparative matrices, and process tracing across UNCLOS 1982, UNFSA 1995, national legislation, policy documents, and literature. Objectives: This study examines how international obligations and domestic legal choices regulate the transformation of harvesting rights from conservation instruments into commodity-like economic interests in Indonesia, Iceland, and New Zealand, and identifies regulatory safeguards for Indonesia's Measured Fishing Policy. Findings: UNCLOS and UNFSA require science-based conservation, precaution, cooperation, monitoring, and adaptive adjustment, but do not mandate private ownership, transferability, or quota markets. Commodification develops cumulatively through domestic choices concerning exclusivity, security, duration, divisibility, leasing, transferability, capitalisation, and concentration. Iceland and New Zealand demonstrate stronger legal and market commodification while retaining formal public authority over catch limits. Indonesia remains closer to an administrative allocation model, although unequal access to capital, information, infrastructure, contracts, and bureaucratic capacity may generate functional commodification. The Conservation-Commodification Continuum framework shows that each country's position depends on the balance between rights strength, market intensity, access and rent distribution, and State corrective capacity. Originality/Novelty: This research develops the Conservation-Commodification Continuum as a multidimensional diagnostic framework integrating international law, property-rights analysis, common-pool resource governance, and Blue Justice. Its theoretical contribution connects international normative dimensions with domestic institutional choices and distributive effects. Its practical contribution formulates conditional, reviewable, transparent, and socially protective regulatory safeguards for Indonesia's Measured Fishing Policy.
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