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Will UK fishers, especially smaller vessels/communities, benefit from the new fishing quotas? Two important elements here:
1) Which species/quota have new, significant increases?
2) Can the fisheries admins act quickly to implement a different allocation system for new* quota?
1) Which species/quota have new, significant increases?
2) Can the fisheries admins act quickly to implement a different allocation system for new* quota?
I'm calculating the distributional gains of species across the fleet but it's already clear that for many fleets the gains are small and counteracted by losing the ability to swap quota with other EU countries. Of course for shellfishers any Brexit scenario is more downsides.
Tbh it's quite strange that swapping is only now being raised as an issue by NFFO, Scot Govt, others. Of all the report recommendations I made in 2017 it was probably the one that received the least interest. We should have been working on this! https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/Not-in-the-Same-Boat-PDF.pdf
*Why the focus on new quota? One of my big issues w the Fisheries White Paper was that it secured existing quota and only consulted on new quota. As I warned at the time, Brexit quota gains were theoretical & any gains might not be for the 'right' species: http://green.brightblue.org.uk/conservation-conversations-blog/2019/10/4/griffin-carpenter-the-accidental-privatisation-of-fishing-quota-has-hurt-coastal-communities-with-a-new-fisheries-bill-we-can-change-this-rrahm
So existing quota has been secured for FQA holders (further cementing privatisation), new gains are mostly for pelagic and North Sea fisheries unsuitable for smaller vessels, and on top of all that there is little time to allocate any quota that is available and of relevance.
It's bad, but it could be different shades of bad. Quota allocations have a habit of establishing expectation so
1) allocations of 'new' quota for 2021 should not follow FQAs (esp. as 60% of the increase is in 2021)
2) there should be a mechanism to revisit in future years
/end
1) allocations of 'new' quota for 2021 should not follow FQAs (esp. as 60% of the increase is in 2021)
2) there should be a mechanism to revisit in future years
/end
