SIF

1. Territorial use Rights
By-Priyanka Chatterjee
School of industrial Fisheries
Roll number – 14, M.sc. 4th semester

2. Use Rights
Where open access is critical problem, the
solution would seem to lie in limiting access.
If this is done, only a limited number of
individuals will have the right to go for
fishing, i.e. to access the fishery. Those
entitled to do so are said to hold use rights.

3. Approaches to Fishery Management involve
 Customary marine tenure (CMT) and territorial use rights in
fishing (TURFs) have long been applied by indigenous
people in determining the usage of local resources.
 Limited entry, providing a limited number of individuals with
the right to access the fishery, was the initial approach to use
rights in modern state management in fisheries.
 Quantitative use rights approaches are increasingly being
adopted, based on allocation of rights either (a) to fish at a
certain level of effort, perhaps using specified bundles of
gear for certain time periods, or
(b) to catch a specified amount of one or more species of
fish, with allocation through community institutions or market-based
approaches.
Use Rights

4. Different Forms of Use Rights

5.  Access rights, which permit the holder to take part in a
fishery (limited entry) or to fish in a particular location
(territorial use rights or ‘TURFs’)
 Withdrawal Rights, which typically involve quantitative
(numerical) limits on resource usage, either through input
(effort) rights or output (harvest) rights.

6.  Territorial use rights
 Input(effort) rights including limited entry
 Output(harvest) rights

7. Territorial Use Rights
TURFs may be defined as community held rights of use
(or tenure) and exclusion over the fishery resources
within a specific area and for a period of time.
Accompanying these rights might be certain
responsibilities for maintenance and proper
management of the resource base, as well as
restrictions on the exercise of the rights of use and
exclusion.

8.  The territory governed by a TURF can relate
to the surface, the bottom, or to the entire
water column within a specific area.
 The size of the territory will vary with the use,
the resources being harvested and the
geographical characteristics.
 It should be sufficient in size, however, so
that use outside of the territory does not
significantly diminish the value of use within.

9.  A TURF is not so much resource specific as it
is site specific.
 The territory should be readily defensible and
protected by the laws and institutions of the
country.
 The boundaries of the territory should,
therefore, be clearly demarcated and
identifiable.

10. TURFs as a Means for Increasing Fishery Net Benefits
The establishment of a TURF may help generate or increase
net benefits from a heretofore open-access fishery in a
number of ways:
 By excluding outsiders from the territory of the TURF
 By controlling the use of labour and capital within the territory
of the TURF
 By dealing with spatial and other externalities partly through
internationalization and partly through coordination with
adjacent TURFs which share the same stocks.
 By investing to enhance future returns, negatively through
increased incentives to avoid depletion and positively through
community works such as landing places, artificial reefs,
aggregation devices and aquaculture
 By providing flexibility to adjust to changes in technology,
markets, resource characteristics and the socio-economic
structure of the fishing community (flexibility includes the
divisibility of the TURF).

11. TURFS as a means for improving the distribution of
benefits
TURFs may help improve the distribution of benefits
among the members of a fishing community in a number
of ways:
 By improving local employment opportunities
 By increasing local income, consumption and nutrition
and evening out fluctuations in income
 By making possible the preservation of community social
organization and reducing intra-and inter-community
conflicts
 By promoting social mobility and “learning by doing”

12. The owner of a TURF can be
 a private individual
 a private individual enterprise
 a group of individuals such as a cooperative, an
association or a community
 a political subdivision such as a town or a province
 a national government
 a multinational agency

13.  In addition, owners of individual TURFs can create
a form of cooperative ownership in which individual
rights are constrained by joint decisions.
 Generally, the effectiveness of a TURF will be
greatest where the specificity of the ownership is
the highest.
 Individuals can usually make decisions more easily
than group of individuals.
 However, with regard to the objective of improving
the welfare of small-scale fishing communities,
ownership of use rights by private individuals could
well be damaging. In these cases, some form of
communal ownership of a TURF will be desirable.

14. Advantages of localized TURFs
 More economically efficient use of the resources
 Improving welfare of small-scale fishing community
 The owner of the TURF can limit the input of capital
labour at the point where the greatest net benefits are
produced
 Opportunity and incentives to manage the resources
within the territory

15.  Traditional TURFs and Problems of Open
Access Fishery
Territorial Use Rights in fisheries, in the sense of
community-held rights of use over resources within
a territory at the exclusion of others have been
known to exist for centuries. Examples of traditional
TURFs are still found today, among other places, in
Brazil, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Oceania,
Ivory Coast. Many of these customary rights are
now crumbling under the pressures of population
growth, technological change and
commercialization of subsistence fisheries.

16. Evaluation of TURFs as potential
management tool can be done in terms of
 Eficiency
 Equity
A TURF is an “efficient” management tool if it provides
the means for generating or increasing the net benefits
from a given fishery (or part of the fishery). A TURF is
"equitable" if it provides the means for improving the
distribution of benefits within the community from the
exploitation of the fishery.

17.  Finally, TURFs, or at least the most successful of
them, may produce revenues for the society at
large: (a) by saving on management and
enforcement cost; (b) by reducing the need for
costly welfare/development assistance to
depressed fishing communities; and (c) by
generating substantial resource rents, part of which
may be creamed off by the government.