Abstract

The fishing sector is a candidate for efficient climate policies because it is commonly exempted from greenhouse gas taxes and the fundamental problem of using a common pool resource is far from optimally solved. At the same time, fisheries management has other objectives. This study uses Swedish fisheries to analyse how the fishing sector and its climate impact are affected by regulations aiming at: (1) solving the common pool problem (2) taxing greenhouse gas emissions and (3) maintaining small-scale fisheries. The empirical approach is a linear programming model where the effects of simultaneously using multiple regulations are analyzed. Solving the common pool problem will lead to a 30 % reduction in emissions and substantially increase economic returns. Taxing greenhouse gas emissions will further reduce emissions. Policies for maintaining the small-scale fleet will increase the size of this fleet segment, but at the cost of lower economic returns. However, combining this policy with fuel taxes will reduce the size of the small-scale fleet, thus counteracting the effects of the policy. If taxation induces fuel-saving innovations, it is shown that this will affect not only emissions and fleet structure, but also quota uptake.

Keywords

CO2 taxation; Fisheries; Greenhouse gas; Innovation; Regulation

Published in

Environmental and Resource Economics
2017, Volume: 68, number: 2, pages: 275-295

SLU Authors

• Waldo, Staffan

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG7 Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
SDG14 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development


UKÄ Subject classification

Economics


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-016-0018-2

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/91372