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Apprenticeship and Conservation Incentives

By Robin Alden and Jennifer Brewer

ABSTRACT

Apprentice programs offer a method to create responsible individual behavior by laying the foundation for successful collective property rights. The object of apprenticeship is not to control fishing effort but to create a community of eventual participants in the fishery who share a common experience and body of knowledge. Apprenticeship exposes the group to common expectations for acceptable operating procedures, fostering conditions for both common understanding and peer pressure for proper behavior. This perception of collective property right mimics customary practice in some successful traditional fisheries such as the Maine lobster fishery where it has been demonstrated both to have conservation benefits and to lower enforcement costs.

Apprenticeship directly regulates the quality of entry as opposed to the quantity. It explicitly provides fishery participants with knowledge necessary to make responsible stewardship decisions, something that is normally left to private initiative. Apprenticeship dampens the rate of entry and eliminates opportunistic entry. It requires a personal investment of time and money as a prerequisite for fishing privileges.

In contrast to some limited entry programs, apprenticeship can support rather than change or destroy the social and economic structure of fishing communities. The apprenticeship approach bolsters both co-management and community-based management and, for that matter, traditional limited entry programs as well.

KEYWORDS: property rights, apprenticeship, entry controls, co-management, stewardship


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