Strategic and dynamic aspects of fisheries management under uncertainty

The sustainable management of renewable resources is a prerequisite for future development on this planet. Fisheries are an important part of this picture, contributing to employment, food security and innumerable ecosystem services. As a typical common-p ool resource, fisheries need to be managed and stewardship incentives need to be maintained in some way or another. The ability to do so depends on two aspects: First, the strategic interactions between the actors need to be taken into account. Second, th e role of risk and uncertainty needs to be acknowledged. An enhanced understanding of these factors is crucial for good policy advice. This research project hopes to contribute to this goal.

The sustainable management of renewable resources is a prerequisite for future development on this planet. Fisheries are an important part of this picture, contributing to employment, food security and innumerable ecosystem services. As a typical common-p ool resource, fisheries need to be managed and stewardship incentives need to be maintained in some way or another. The ability to do so is, inter alia, constrained by two aspects: The strategic interactions between the actors need to be taken into accoun t as well as the role of risk and uncertainty needs to be acknowledged. An enhanced understanding of these factors is crucial for good policy advice. This research project hopes to contribute to this goal. Specifically, I plan to work on three papers tha t ask 1.) how competition between various actors affects the ability to sustainably use a common asset, 2.) how this competition is influenced by the degree and type of uncertainty, and 3.) how risk and uncertainty impacts individual investment decisions and hence the aggregate exploitation pattern. A stay at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), will serve to deepen and broaden the work on this important research agenda, and it will significantly contribute to the work undertaken for the h avkyst project "REPIN" (NFR-224818). Moreover, the project will link the emerging interdisciplinary research group on renewable resources at the University of Oslo with UCSB, and it will give me the opportunity to further establish myself as a scientist.