Marine Fisheries as a Source of Sustainable Wealth of Nations

It is well established in the economics literature that long term economic growth and wellbeing depend on the accumulating and managing wealth, wealth that includes manufactured, natural, human and social capital. The World Bank has constructed global wealth accounts for nearly 15 years, most recently reported in The Changing Wealth of Nations (World Bank, 2011). The component for natural capital includes mineral and energy stocks, agricultural land, forests and protected areas but omits a number of important natural resources, one of which is fisheries.  This omission reflects the lack of readily available data for fisheries accounts at the country level, despite their critical importance for some countries.

This paper describes an effort to estimate fisheries assets by country, their importance for the wealth of nations, and implications of unsustainable management for long-term growth and development.  Starting with fisheries the paper also addresses several methodological issues such as the treatment of subsidies in the valuation of fisheries and treatment of the ownership for migratory and straddling fisheries as well as open ocean, high seas fisheries.  Estimates of asset values are ex ante in nature and given the high degree of uncertainty about the future of the world’s fisheries, alternative asset values will be developed under a range of different scenarios based on alternative management schemes and potential impacts of climate change.