A seminal policy paper published after the election of President Obama, primarily sponsored by EDF and written by Lubchenco and a team of like-minded scientists, asserted that "catch shares, regardless of their form, have been proven to restore economic and environmental health to ocean fisheries."
The paper explained that catch shares transform wild resources that have traditionally been commonly owned into tradeable catching rights. The value of those shares, no matter what their size, increases as the value of the fishery increases, encouraging conservation.
Catch shares have proved a very hard sell.
The fishing people saw little reason to change to catch shares, as Lubchenco and her supporters in EDF have learned. The effort to impose market principles befitting big business has left the Obama administration alienated from its political base around the working waterfronts and, except for EDF, from much of the environmental sector as well.
Even with Lubchenco at the head of NOAA, the EDF campaign has failed to sell catch shares to those they are supposed to benefit. Congressional hearings have been contentious and anti-catch share sentiment helped unify the commercial and recreational fishing sectors, powering the "United We Fish" rally in Washington, D.C., last February. On catch shares, EDF, Lubchenco and the Obama administration are largely on their own.
Even other green activist groups, such as the Pew Environment Group, Ecotrust and Food & Water Watch, have expressed doubts about the catch share system, warning that it can destabilize coastal fishing cultures that have survived for centuries.
Read the complete story from the Gloucester Daily Times.