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Environmental impacts of trade liberalisation

The impact of market liberalisation on the Lake Victoria fishery

How market liberalisation led to deteriorating fish stocks in Uganda

Authors: T.E. Muramira
Publisher: Network of Ugandan Researchers and Research Users , 2002

Full text of document

This report analyses the effects of market liberalisation on the Lake Victoria fishery in Uganda, drawing on a review of secondary literature, a field survey, and statistical analysis. It attempts to establish the relationship between annual exploitable fish stocks, the amount of effort allocated to fishing activity in the area, and fish price changes during 1976-2002. It uses linear regression techniques to isolate the key market liberalisation parameters of relevance to the observed stock changes.

The report finds that significant parameters included export market prices, fishing effort, average cost of that effort and annual fish catches in previous years. Its regression results show a sharp decline in exploitable stocks as effort allocation and export market prices increased.

Thus the paper concludes that the liberalisation led to patterns of resource use with negative implications for the fishery in the long term. It argues that the gradual degradation of the fishery resulted from open access conditions; a lack of monitoring data; the breakdown in government regulatory services; and the resultant effort intensification as fisherman sought to benefit from higher market prices.

Considering policy changes to ensure sustainable use of the fishery in future, it recommends that:

  • a transferable quota and licensing system such as that used in other fisheries, could be applied in Lake Victoria as a way of introducing property rights
  • license holders could be encouraged to take on responsibility for resource management
  • further licensing should be based on careful assessment of the existing stock and its ability to sustain industrial processing and export of fish
  • taxation could be used to adjust the reduce the net profits that could be made from fishing, encouraging the relocation of some effort towards other sectors
  • supervision, monitoring and regulation of fishing needs to be improved.

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