Developments on fisheries management in Peru: The new individual vessel quota system for the anchoveta fishery

Rights-based management (RBM) has been proposed during the last two decades as a means to counteract the race for fish in the Peruvian pelagic fishery. Recently, the government has decided to implement RBM in the pelagic fisheries in the form of a system that allocates individual quotas for vessels licensed to harvest Peruvian anchoveta. The aim of this paper is to analyse the introduced individual vessel quota (IVQ) system and to identify factors that may have the potential to either aid or undermine the achievement of the objective of reducing the race for fish. The non-transferability characteristic of the vessel quota may aid protecting the social fabric from concentration of rights. A substantial fleet reduction, however, may not be achieved. Measures to permanently eliminate redundant capacity and thus the threat of the race for fish may be required. Such measures should comprise either decommissioning schemes or instruments to regulate transferability.