Despite an eye-watering price tag of approximately $200 billion, the benefits of a concerted effort to restore global fisheries outweigh the costs, according to a new report published in PLoS ONE. The authors claim that such a scheme would pay for itself in 12 years, and see a net gain (if you’ll pardon the expression) of up to $1400 billion after 50 years, boosting fishing from a loss-making (when subsidies are considered) to a profit-making industry.
In their new report, Benefits of Rebuilding Global Marine Fisheries Outweigh Costs, an international team of economists and ecologists reiterate a very simple solution: to fish less. But that’s neither as cheap nor as simple as it may sound. If, as the report suggests, current global fishing capacity is 2.5 times higher than that required for sustainable levels, 2.6 million (60 percent) of the world’s fishing boats will require decommissioning, and between 15 and 22 million (43–63 percent) of the world’s fishers will require compensation or retraining. The authors argue that though this may not be a popular choice in all quarters, a managed transition is preferable to having mass unemployment thrust upon the industry. The researchers have calculated the cost of downsizing to be between $130 billion and $292 billion, with a mean of $203 billion. The report additionally calls for an end to $19 billion per year in “harmful and ambiguous subsidies.”
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