An objective approach to the negotiation of allocations from shared living resources

Pergamon Marine Poficy, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 145-155, 1996

Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

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0308-597X(95)00041-0

An objective approach to the negotiation of allocations from shared living resources

J F Caddy

Negotiating procedures for the allocation of shared fishery resources by multiple users have not been formalized, and often place emphasis on historical shares of the harvest. This may not always be compatible with the duty of care for the resource and its environment expressed in Agenda 21 of UNCED. It is suggested here how ancil- lary considerations, with the consensus of all interested parties, might be included in a resource allocation negotiation, following a procedure which could have broader applications elsewhere. A distinction Is made in the negotiating process between the proposal of tech- nlcal factors by interested parties, their quantif icat ion for each party, best accomplished by an impartial review panel, and the relative weighUngs finally given to each technical factor, decided by negotiat ion. Negotiations could efficiently focus on these weightings within a spreadsheet matrix of numerical values by interested party and factor. From a hypothetical example, it seems that prior negotiation on which factors to include may be unnecessary with multiple participants: any factor not achieving general consensus will have a low weighting, and a relatively minor inf luence on the final al locations. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd

The author is the Chief at the Marine Resources Service, Fishery Resources Di- vision, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome 00100, Italy. Fax: +39 6 52253020.

continued on page 146

Introduction The allocation of catches f rom a common stock remains one of the most difficult processes in fisheries management , but has been given little theoretical consideration in the literature. Prior to the United Nations Convent ion on the Law of the Sea, 1982, existing investment, equity in a fishery, and past catches, tended to be given predominant weight in determining national shares in fisheries beyond territorial seas. Subse- quently, preferential rights of coastal States to living resources in exclusive economic zones (EEZs) have taken precedence t, but the 1982 Convent ion gives little guidance on the procedure to be adopted for sharing common resources, either for those lying across two or more EEZs , or for straddling resources between one or more E E Z and the high seas. This latter case is the focus of the New York Conference on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks still in session at the time of writing. It is important to note that this article does not take a position on the rights of parties sharing a living marine resource, which are as laid out in the 1982 UN Convention, or other international instruments now under development at the above conference. Also of relevance to the discussion here, are clauses in Chapter 17 of Agenda 212 , which calls for ' In tegra ted management and sustainable development of coastal areas, including exclusive economic zones ' , and for ' the development and application of methods such as national resource and environmental accounting that reflect changes in value resulting f rom uses of coastal and marine areas, including pollution, marine erosion, loss of resources and habitat destruction' :

It may be noted that similar problems of sharing occur at or below national level; for example between fleets, districts or communities, where these have been allocated some form of user or access rights, or are de facto, exercising them. They also occur wherever multiple users of a renewable resource need to take into account their environmental

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Negotiation of allocations from shared living

continued from page 145 This article and the ideas contained in it, represent the personal opinion of the author, and do not necessarily reflect an official position of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

1UN, The Law of the Sea, official text of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with annexes and tables. United Nations, New York, p 224. 2UN, Agenda 21 : Programme of Action for Sustainable Development; Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and Statement of Forest Principles. The final text of agreements negotiated by Govern- ments at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UN- CED), 3-14 June 1992, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, p 294.

resources: J F Caddy

impacts on its sustainable use. In what follows reference will be made to those sharing a resource as ' interested parties' , but no attempt will be made to enter into legal questions concerning the nature, rights, or obligations of such parties. It is simply noted here that the present scheme presupposes that all such parties would have to be in agreement, before a negotiating procedure such as described here could be seriously proposed.

The perspective suggested here is that although allocation negotiations are now largely ad hoc or unstructured, they should eventually come to reflect the new requirements for proper stewardship of the living resources and their aquatic environment spelled out at U N C E D and in Agenda 21. z Thus, the costs of proper stewardship of the resource and aquatic environment, and not just current fleet capacity and historical catch record, will be the main criteria used. This perspective is already implied for semi-enclosed seas in Article 123 of the UN Convention, on co-operation of States bordering enclosed or semi-enclosed seas. They are directed to: 'co-operate with each other in the exercise of their rights and in the performance of their duties under [the] Convention . . . [and to endeavour], directly or through an appropriate regional organization: inter alia, (a) to co-ordinate the management, conservation, exploration and exploitation of the living resources of the sea; (b) to co-ordinate the implementation of their rights and duties with respect to the protection and preservation of the marine environment; (c) to co-ordinate their scientific research policies and undertake where appropriate joint programmes of scientific research in the area'.

The parallel implementation or linkage between resource management, research and maintenance of environmental integrity implied above, seems particularly relevant to joint managements of watersheds and the enclosed or semi-enclosed water body they drain into. With consensus, this could be extended to other systems of natural resource use. A framework is proposed in this article for calculation of allocations; calculations that may be regularly updated following an objective technical procedure: one that places an incentive in the negotiating process on maintaining resource and environmental integrity.

Following such an approach, and recognizing the need at intervals, to update national allocations as technical factors change, it may be more convenient that the allocation formula used be left extrinsic to any joint convention that may be developed governing co-operative resource use, since a convention is a document that should be changed only infre- quently. In this way, new technical developments can be more easily incorporated into the resource and environmental assessments, and any subsequent revisions of the allocation process. The only items that should perhaps be specified in such a convention are the elements that it is legitimate to give weight to in the allocation process, and as noted, even this may not be necessary within the present framework.

A non-exclusive list o f factors relevant to resource allocation for shared marine resources

Some of the factors that have been considered, or reasonably could be considered, in the allocation process are the following:

(1) In the past, (eg prior to declaration of EEZs under the former In te rna t iona l Commiss ion for Nor thwest Atlant ic Fisheries:

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3FAO, 'Marine resources and the Law of the Sea: A decade of change,' FAO Fishery Circular 853, 1992, p 69. 4FAO, 'Review of the state of world marine fishery resources' FAO Fishery Technical Paper 335, 1994, p 136. 5j A Gulland, 'Some problems of the management of shared stocks', FAO Fishery Technical Paper 206, 1981, p 22. 6j F Caddy, 'Some considerations relevant to the definition of share stocks and their allocation between adjacent economic zones', FAO Fishery Circular 749 (Doc FIRM/C749), 1982, p 40.

Negotiation of allocations from shared living resources: J F Caddy

ICNAF), national allocations in the (then) international waters of the Northwest Atlantic, came to be based on the historical catch record, especially weighted towards catches in recent years. This weighting had some short-term justification, since a higher recent catch by one State implied that it had made a larger investment in fleet construction, and had a larger manpower dependent on the fishery for their livelihood.

(2) There are counter arguments to giving too much weight to this last factor however. The first is to note that the historical precedent in terms of preserving current investment in catching, processing and manpower becomes technically weaker for catches taken in much earlier years: in fact, a 'statute of limitations' might be adopted such that historical catches x years or more prior to the current year are given diminished weight in the allocation of catches.

(3) There is now the perception, following U N CED , and since the onset of the UN Conference on Shared Stocks and Highly Migra- tory Fish Stocks, that uncontrolled investment and overexploitation are the main factors that have led to stock collapses in many parts of the world, and have also adversely affected biodiversity. 3"4 A party which restrained fleet development, and maintained a limited historical presence in a fishery, might therefore just as reasonably argue that its restraint in limiting its historical catch should be rewarded for not contributing to stock collapse; or at least, should not be penalized.

(4) If the resource in question is an important part of the diet of the coastal inhabitants of one country, or if there are subsistence fisheries and coastal communities that depend on them solely for their livelihood, it might be argued on socio-economic grounds, that this should also be reflected in the allocation.

(5) The UN Convention makes explicit allowance for the rights of coastal States into whose EEZs the resource partly falls, or through which it migrates in the course of its lifecycle, and considers such factors as justifying at least a share of the resource. The residence of the resource in the fishing zone of an interested party for a given fraction of its exploitable lifecycle seems therefore a valid consideration, irrespective of whether the country has a history of exploitation. It follows, therefore, that in sharing a resource 5"6 such a party's share of the resource distribution area, weighted by its time of residence there during its normal migration route, could be a valid factor to take into account. One formulation that reflects the spatio-temporal share of a resource spending a fraction AT(i) of the year passing through area A ( i ) within jurisdiction (i), could be as follows:

S H A R E / = A i. A Ti /~(m i. A Ti)

(6) In the UN Convention, anadromous species are considered a special case, and the country of the river of origin is given particular advantages in harvesting the stock returning to the 'home' river. Presumably this is because the State(s) whose river basin the resource migrates through, has foregone optimal fishing opportunities in the river and on inland spawning beds, as well as given up other economic opportunities in river use (such as the use of fresh water resources, as a catchment for agricultural runoff, or as a mechanism for removal of effluents), when such uses might 'benefit '

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some other national activity. They may even have invested national funds to enhance, or avoid damage to, the migration, the spawning beds or nursery areas. This duty of care has a cost, which appears to be compensated for, with priority user rights under the Convention. Where critical upriver spawning or nursery habitats have not been conserved in the past, measures to restore the environment so that it will again support the anadromous resource, will have to be paid for by countries of the catchment area, who are unlikely to be assisted by those parties only harvesting the resource on the high seas.

(7) Such an argument for 'stewardship of spawning and nursery areas' although not mentioned under any convention, could be argued for, strictly from biological considerations, even where the spawning area is not within a river, but is within the coastal waters or E E Z of a particular jurisdiction. 5'6 It may be considered following UNCED, that if the area of reproduction and juvenile habitat falls within the marine fishing zone of an interested party, that this is a valid argument for a preferential share by the party concerned. The rights in this case tend to have a (0,1) characteristic: either you have a spawning area in your waters or you don't . This has a certain logic, since in order to conserve the resource throughout its range, critical areas need to be protected from other national users of the coastal environment, and as noted, the actions to be taken and expenses incurred, fall exclusively within the competence of the coastal party or parties most concerned.

In exercising the duty of protecting spawning or nursery grounds (and critical habitats in general) on behalf of all those sharing the resource elsewhere in its range, such a party may have to expend particular efforts in control and surveillance, and may have to forego particular economic opportunities within its E E Z (such as marine mining, or the exploitation of another species that coexists in the catches with the shared resource), if a critical stage in the life history of a shared resource is to be completed undisturbed. The presence of a critical habitat in one or more exclusive fishing zones might therefore reasonably be considered a factor to be taken into account in the sharing process.

(8) The UN Convention also requires countries to make efforts to obtain adequate information and carry out research, but does not make a linkage between research expenditure and the resource allocation obtained. Since carrying out resources research is part of the 'exercise of care' , the investment in research towards the common assessment and management of a stock might be logically related by some parties to the allocation process. ('Fisheries Re- search' is intended here to include highly expensive research vessel survey work as well as applied biological research aimed at solving fishery management problems. It does not necessarily include pure or fundamental research).

The above list of factors is not-exhaustive, and it is of interest to consider whether negative factors should also be given validity in the sharing process, such as the rates of discharge, or amounts of harmful pollutants, discharged into the common resource area by each interested party.

Inland seas are recognized under the UN Convention as a special category of marine area where particular care must be taken by riparian

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7S P Volovik, V G Dubinina and D Seme- nov 'Hydrobiology and dynamics of fishing in the Sea of Azov. Part 1 : General Fisher- ies Council for the Mediterranean', Studies and Reviews, Vol 64, 1993, p 143. aYu P Zaitsev, 'Impacts of eutrophication on the Black Sea fauna. Part 2: General Fisheries Council for the Mediterranean', Studies and Reviews, Vol 64, 1993, p 143. 9r G Balkas, R Dechev, R Mihnea, O Serbanescu and U Unluata 'State of the marine environment in the Black Sea region', UNEP Regional Seas Reports and Studies, No 124, 1990, p 40. I°FAO, 'Report of the second technical consultation on stock assessment in the Black Sea', FAO Fishery Report 495 (Doc FIPL/R495), 1994b, p 199. 11j F Caddy, 'Towards a comparative evaluation of human impacts on fishery eco- systems of enclosed and semi-enclosed seas', Reviews in Fishery Science, Vol 1, No 1, 1993, pp 57-95.


States. A particular example that originally provoked the present reflection is the case of the Black Sea: an inland sea with now six coastal States, whose once valuable fisheries have been seriously impacted by the combined effects of pollution, overfishing, and the introduction of exotic biological pests. 4'7'8 Here, important anadromous resources (particularly sturgeons) have been seriously affected by overfishing, and their spawning rivers damaged by pollution, water diversion or blockage by dams. 9 It is in the basic philosophy of UNCED, and underlies the Global Environmental Programme (GEF) for the Black Sea and the Black Sea Environmental Convention, that riparian States have agreed to make efforts to clean up the marine environment. A consensus seems to be emerging in the Black Sea region that tackling fisheries management problems without explicitly taking into account environmental issues is doomed to failure. 1°

It might therefore be argued that investments made in pollution cleanup, restoration of critical biological habitats for the living resource in question, and restocking, are legitimate factors to be considered in sharing the marine resource once it has recovered. A counter argument to this is possible from interested parties which were not responsible for the environmental degradation in the first place, who may argue for an explicit positive factor in their favour: ie a 'full score' for non-pollution parties, and progressively lower scores for those whose past and current contribution to environmental welfare has fallen below perfection. No position is taken on which of these arguments is more convincing, and in fact in the present framework, both arguments could vie for support simultaneously. It must be noted however that excessive emphasis on 'past sins', like the argument based on historical fleet size, may not encourage a positive approach to future development of the many living marine resources and environments which are currently affected.

It must be in the spirit of co-operation between interested parties sharing the resources of a commonly-shared ecosystem, that efforts in good faith should be made to clean up an environment polluted by actions condoned under previous administrations. Like past excessive fishing efforts, earlier acts of pollution should not be subject to penalties in perpetuity. Thus, clean-up activities that improve the chance of reproduction and replenishment of a stock in that zone might be considered as having more validity in the allocation process, as should, perhaps, applied research and development work aimed at restoring a damaged common ecosystem.

In the case of seriously depleted resources which are having difficulty in reproducing in the environments of semi-enclosed seas which are now degraded; (for example, the Black Sea sturgeon); restocking a common fishing area from hatcheries requires an investment that is in the common good, and it might be argued that this should be compensated for in the catch share. Where a biological vector has been introduced, notably the damaging exotic jellyfish, Mnemiops i s leydei, which now interferes with the early life history of commercial finfish 7'8'1°A1, it could be argued that the contribution of an interested party to biological control, resource restocking, or resource rehabilitation in the wake of such an invasion, should be factors recognized in the resource allocation process, rather than seeking to identify and penalize the party responsible for its introduction in the first place. Compensation for restocking efforts 'for the common good' in the allocation process, (as for the factors mentioned under items 7 and 8 above), provides a positive

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Figure 1. Illustrating by flow chart, the sequence of activities in a negotiation on resource allocation, as proposed in this paper. A return 'loop' is provided for: either within the negotiation, or between successive negotiations.

l A

J incentive to all parties to make unilateral contributions to the welfare of the common resource and its environment.

Integrating the effects of multiple factors

From what has been said so far, it might be envisaged that, if interested parties agree:

(a) national allocations could be seen to depend on multiple factors, but each will be given different weights by the individual parties concerned;

(b) the combined effects of the different factors should be considered within some form of model, such as the simple additive one illustrated here;

(c) the values of the individual technical factors assigned to each party are not fixed for all time, but need to be renegotiated at intervals in relation to the changing harvests and other contributions to the common resource welfare by the parties sharing a resource;

(d) there seems to emerge a requirement for the allocation process to proceed in stages, from the identification of important factors, their quantification by independent review, to a negotiation on the relative weightings to be given to the different factors;

(e) probably also some kind of appeals procedure or system of binding arbitration will have to be allowed for. This is not discussed further in this article, but it is implied in Figure 1 by the 'feedback loop', which implies that the negotiation process may be repeated if agreement is not reached the first time.

How then should stages in the negotiation of a resource share be structured under this hypothetical scheme?

An objective framework for resource sharing

Before finishing this discussion, it is recognized that considerations

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entirely extraneous to the fisheries sector may on occasion have been the deciding factors in agreeing on national shares of a shared fish resource. Fisheries may, for example, have been a minor component of an overriding economic or military agreement between countries, or have been determined by a dominant interest in mutual trade in some other product than fish.

These 'non-fishery' factors are not ignored in the present framework, but it is suggested that they only be allowed to play a role in the third phase of the negotiations, namely when the relative weighting given to each factor is being decided, when it may be hard to avoid 'realpolitik' issues playing a part. The view expressed here is that they should not be allowed to distort the basic technical fundamentals underlying the resource negotiation. Technical fundamentals should be argued in good faith, in the spirit that all parties are custodians of the common resource.

Early in the negotiation there will obviously be an incentive for each interested party to argue that the factor or factors favouring a larger share for its party be given a high weighting. Clearly, however, the more factors are agreed to be relevant, the less influence one factor has on the overall result, particularly if it does not receive general support. This approach means that admitting a factor to the negotiation which is important to other parties will not necessarily gravely affect your share, if the factors judged important by yourself and most other interested parties, outweigh this particular factor. The addition of factors that are of interest to only one or a few parties should not therefore block the negotiation, since the majority of parties will exercise pressure to give them a low weighting in negotiating the final result.

With multiple factors in play, the negotiation breaks down into three parts:

(1) What factors are relevant? (2) How do we calculate the relative values for each party that each

factor implies? (3) What weightings are to be given to the different factors?

The approach suggested here is to make these three questions more explicit and allow them to be considered separately in sequence in the negotiation, as illustrated in Figure 1. The real 'bottom line' of the negotiation can be seen in practice to be resolved in the third and last of the above stages in negotiation; namely, in determining by voting or consensus, what is the weighting to be given to any particular factor.

The approach advocated here, which is spelled out in an example in the spreadsheet, (Table 1) stems from the simple accounting procedure described in the following section.

Possible criteria for allocating catches, allowable fishing effort, or fleet units for shared demersal, pelagic and anadromous fishery resources

A non-exclusive list of factors that may be of importance to a resource allocation could then include the following:

(a) catches by the party as a share of the total in recent years; (b) the area of stock within each party's zone, (possibly weighted

seasonally for migration); (c) whether or not a spawning or nursery area occurs within the zone;

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Table 1. Hypothetical example of construction of a series of matrices to support negotiation on resource allocation.

(a) Assuming negotiated weighting factors

(i) Numerical values assigned by the review panel to factors 1-8 chosen by the interested parties* Factor No

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Interested Historical Nursery Shelf Research Cost of Clean-up Pest Essential party catch area area? costs? re-stocking? costs? control? in diet? A 23000 1 100 230 100 100 1 x e ~ 1 × e 7 B 20000 1 2300 3400 1 × e z 1500 1 × e 7 1 × e 7 C 15050 1 x e -z 200 1200 4000 2300 1 x e 7 2 D 23000 1 x e -7 3000 100 1 × e -7 3000 4000 3 E 2300 1 4000 100 3000 200 1000 8 Units t 0 km 2 US$ US$ US$ US$ x on scale:

x 10 3 x 10 3 10 4 10 3 0-9

(ii)Weighting factors as agreed to by interested parties through negotiation A 0,02 100 0.1 0.05 0.05 0.1 B 0.02 100 0.1 0.05 0.05 0.1 C 0.02 100 0.1 0.05 0.05 0.1 D 0.02 100 0.1 0.05 0.05 0.1 E 0.02 100 0.1 0.05 0.05

(iii) Product of value x weighting factor

A 460.00 100.00 10.00 11.50 5.00 B 400.00 100.00 230.00 170.00 0.00 C 301.00 0.00 20.00 60.00 200.00 D 460.00 0.00 300.00 5.00 0.00 E 46.00 100.00 400.00 5.00 150.00

0.02 0.1 0.02 0.1 0.02 0.1 0.02 0.1

0.1 0.02 0.1

10.00 150.00 230.00 300.00

20.00

(b) Assuming weighting factors constant throughout (= 0.1)

Product sums

0.00 0.00 596.5 0.00 0.00 1050 0.00 0.20 811.2

80.00 0.30 1145.3 20.00 0.80 741.8

Overall product sum 4344.8

Resulting percent share of resource 13.73 24.17 18.67 26.36 17.07

(iii) Products of values in (a) (i) above × weighting factors assumed to have constant values throughout of 0.1 A 2300,00 0.10 1 10.0 23.00 10.00 10.00 0,00 0.00 2353,1 20,08 B 2000.00 0.10 230.00 340.00 0.00 150.00 0.00 0.00 2720.1 23.21 C 1505.00 0.00 20.00 120.00 400.00 230.00 0.00 0.20 2275.2 19.41 D 2300.00 0.00 300.00 10.00 0.00 300.00 400.00 0.30 3310.3 28.25 E 230.00 0.10 400.00 10.00 300.00 20.00 100.00 0.80 1060.9 9.05

Overall product sum 11719.6

*a very small value, (eg 1 × e 7) is included in this matrix where national share is zero, to avoid computational difficulties.

(d) each party's contribution to the health of the environment or habitat of the species;

(e) each party's contribution to research and monitoring; (f) each party's contribution to restocking of the resource from fish

hatcheries (sea ranching); (g) each party's efforts to clean up of critical habitats, and control of

noxious species; (h) other factors to be defined.

The above issues are more or less relevant depending on the type of resource in question, as suggested by the subjective evaluations in Table 2.

Irrespective of the units in which the fundamental factors are mea-

*Following the Darwinian principle of managing by unit populations or stocks, all parties fishing a resource will have to contribute data to the stock assessment if it is to be accurate. + Spawning habitat. XX to XXX...X: Progressively important factors in this case.

Table 2. The author's personal and non-exhaustive list of factors that may be of importance to allocations for four main groups of resources.

Non- migratory Non-

Migratory demersal migratory marine or benthic pelagic Anadromous

Factor resource resource resource resource (a) Recent catches? * X X X X (b) Share of stock area? X X X XXX + (c) Spawning here? XX XXX X XXX...X + (d) Habitat clean-up? XX XXX XX XXX...X + (e) Research inputs? X X X XXX + (f) Restocking? ? X ? XXX + (g) Pest control? ? XX X XX +

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sured, all factors are reduced to proportions, and these can be expressed as additive models which finally provide the overall allocation by interested party as percentages. The following hypothetical example assumes that for each technical factor, the technical factors for all parties can be quantified. These values (by party and technical factor) are each multiplied by a negotiated weighting factor, before using the sums of these products to calculate an overall share for each party.

As an example, the share going to party i could then be an additive function, of:

a* (catches by i over the last x years)/(total annual catches for these years by all parties).

+ b* (area-weighted time in zone i = area of zone i x proportion of time in zone /)/(sum of the product of zone areas, and times of residence there).

+ c* (a factor of 1 if the spawning or nursery area occurs within zone /)/(the number of zones containing a spawning or nursery area)

+ d* (expenditures incurred in improving resource habitat by party /)/(total expenditures by all parties on this factor).

+ e* (research expenditures on monitoring and research which can be documented for the past x year(s))/(total expenditure by all parties on these factors over the last x year(s)).

+ f* (expenditures on restocking, or number of individuals of the species placed in the sea)/(total expenditures by all parties on this item, or total numbers released by all parties). Note: / = divided by; * = multiplied by

Possible applications

Table 1 shows 2 hypothetical calculations using this approach in an E X C E L spreadsheet (this procedure is simply executed on other spreadsheets, or even on hand calculators). The upper block of Table 1 tabulates the basic numerical values assigned by the review panel, following investigation, to the parameters proposed by all parties (which may be in different units of measurement for each factor). The calculations here show 8 factors for 5 interested parties (one may wish to assume a limit of 3 factors assigned to each party, but that on several occasions there was agreement on a common factor by two or more parties). The weighting factors agreed to, after negotiation, are shown in the second matrix of values, and resulted in the third matrix, which consists of values multiplied by weighting factors. After summing horizontally, and expressing as percentages, this provides the allocations in the last column, shown in bold.

The first calculation gives a relatively high weighting to historical catches, perhaps because at least 3 parties had important fisheries in the past. It also places a moderately high weighting on the presence of a nursery area (3 parties had these), but low weight to pest control and importance of fish to the diet of coastal populations, where only 1 or 2 parties had an interest in these factors. The overall ranking favours party D, which has strong technical fundamentals for historical catch, shelf area, and funds spent on pollution clean-up. The share is fairly even however, with party B having the second largest allocation, due to moderately large catches and a large shelf area, a nursery area, and significant expenditures on research and clean-up.

Just to show the importance of the negotiation process, (but at the

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same time, the absence of an absolute predominance of negotiation over 'technical fundamentals'), a final matrix shows the results of calculations using the same values for technical factors as in the first case, but where equal weighting is now given to all factors. This still places parties D and C ahead of the others, but the ranking of the remaining parties, and the individual shares have changed considerably.

Evidently, technical fundamentals, but also negotiation skills and co-operative strategies between parties can affect the result with this approach, even though the evaluation of national weightings by factor is carried out by the independent panel. Strong technical fundamentals, wise choices of weighting factors, and a collaborative negotiating stance, should presumably play an important role in this approach. Clearly, the effect of one factor is likely to be reduced as we increase the size of the matrix, and hence, the product:

Number of factors * Number of interested parties.

This argues for both a minimum number of parties in the negotiation, (3 or more?) and a limit to the number of factors which can be introduced by each party. These issues may themselves be the subject of an initial negotiation, which should also lead to agreement on the members of the impartial panel or review group charged with developing the technical matrix, once proposals have been made by the interested parties on the factors to be included.

Discussion

Each interested party in the allocation procedure suggested here introduces a limited number of quantifiable variables into the negotiation that they judge relevant to the sharing process; irrespective of whether this judgement is shared by other parties. It is not proposed that these numerical values be negotiated, but that it should be the task of an independent review group to quantify and verify the information provided by each party, and assemble corresponding values in a matrix as a basis for negotiation.

The new element in the present proposal is to separate the process of determining the relevant technical factors from the process of assigning a relative weighting to each. An independent review panel with no direct interest in the result of the negotiation, whose conclusions are agreed in advance to be binding on all parties, evaluates the relative contribution or importance of all quantitative factors proposed by an interested party on behalf of all. To this point, no negotiation has been engaged in.

At the onset of negotiation, a matrix of relative values by interested party of a (potentially unlimited) number of factors already chosen by them, but quantified by the independent panel, is presented to the interested parties. The negotiation consists of the parties coming to an agreement on the relative weightings to be given to each factor in the final calculation of their relative share. Evidently, if a particular factor is believed to be important by only one party, its relative final share in determining the final allocation arrived at will be relatively unimpor- tant, however great the advantage expected from it by the party that proposed it.

It must be clear that this article is principally intended to be provocative, and to stimulate discussion on the linkages between

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resource management and use and maintenance of the environmental integrity the resource depends on. Most marine environments still largely generate rent f rom resource harvesting, but the mechanisms for managing environments , and their resources, tend to be separate , and are often the responsibilities of different ministries. Many semi-enclosed seas for example, have different bodies dealing with resources and environment; the Baltic Sea Fishery Commission and Helsinki Conven- tion for the Baltic, and similar independent bodies for the Mediterra- nean and Black Seas. One result of this 'economic disengagement ' is that incentives for expenditures on pollution control and environmental enhancement are not motivated by being functionally linked to the main source of revenue f rom the water body, the living resource harvest. Thus, in many countries, some sectors of the economy, or a government depar tment other than that concerned with fisheries, may lack an economic motivation for expenditures on improving the environment of a shared resource. By imagining this linkage to occur 'up front ' in the resource allocation process, the paper points to the positive feedback that could result f rom closer integration of resource and environmental issues in the marine environment. Emphasising the role of environmental and habitat factors in resource sharing and use, rather than as more abstract concerns with the 'quality of the environment ' , could inciden- tally, p romote the necessary level of research needed to restore damaged environments to productive use.

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An objective approach to the negotiation of allocations from shared living resources