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  • Perspective
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Bycatch levies could reconcile trade-offs between blue growth and biodiversity conservation

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 715–725 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Economic activities in the ocean (that is, the ‘blue economy’) provide value to society, yet also jeopardize marine ecosystems. For example, fisheries are an essential source of income and food security for billions of people, yet bycatch poses a major threat to marine biodiversity, creating trade-offs between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. This Perspective explores bycatch levies as a market-based instrument for reconciling these trade-offs. We outline the theory and practice of bycatch levies to demonstrate how they could incentivize bycatch prevention and raise revenue for compensatory conservation, provided they are well designed, as part of a policy mix for sustainable and equitable ocean governance. We then explore ways forward for mainstreaming bycatch levies into the blue economy. While compensatory bycatch mitigation has been controversial, increasing adoption of net outcome approaches to biodiversity conservation suggests they could become mainstreamed within the next decade. Bycatch levies could raise billions of dollars towards closing global biodiversity financing gaps, delivering net outcomes for biodiversity under the United Nations Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework while enabling blue growth, and moving towards win–wins for economic welfare and biodiversity conservation.

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Fig. 1: Bycatch as an externality.
Fig. 2: Biodiversity outcomes under bycatch levies.
Fig. 3: A schematic of different possible relationships between target catch production and bycatch, and how different levy designs might lead to conservation impact for different situations.

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Acknowledgements

H.B. is grateful to the Oxford-NaturalMotion graduate scholarship for funding her DPhil studies and to T. Pienkowski, R. Oyanedel and S. zu Ermgassen for reading and commenting on an early draft of this manuscript. H.B., W.N.S.A. and E.J.M.-G. are grateful to The Pew Charitable Trusts, who have supported this work through a Pew Marine Fellowship to E.J.M.-G. W.N.S.A. acknowledges support from the US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, the OX/BER Research Partnership Seed Funding (OXBER_STEM7) and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology & Inland Fisheries (IGB) 2020 short-term visit programme for postdocs. This manuscript does not necessarily reflect the policy of US NOAA Fisheries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science (ICCS), Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Hollie Booth, William N. S. Arlidge & E. J. Milner-Gulland

  2. Wildlife Conservation Society, New York City, NY, USA

    Hollie Booth

  3. Faculty of Life Sciences, Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    William N. S. Arlidge

  4. Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany

    William N. S. Arlidge

  5. Department of Economics, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

    Dale Squires

  6. Southwest Fisheries Science Centre, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, San Diego, CA, USA

    Dale Squires

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H.B. conceptualized the paper and led on writing and subsequent revisions of the original draft. W.N.S.A., D.S. and E.J.M.-G. provided substantial inputs, guidance and mentorship throughout, in particular supporting supervision, review and editing.

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Booth, H., Arlidge, W.N.S., Squires, D. et al. Bycatch levies could reconcile trade-offs between blue growth and biodiversity conservation. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 715–725 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01444-w

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