This is a useful corollary to the idea of land rents or other sovereign wealth funds. These tiny nations cooperate to manage their local fish stocks, creating a prosperity dividend for their people and maintaining the health of their fisheries.
The key to success, said Ludwig Kumoru, the outgoing chief executive of the PNA, was to jettison a system in which the PNA nations undercut each other in trying to sell fishing rights in their waters to foreign fleets – and replace it with another, called the Vessel-Day Scheme. That scheme sees them calculate how much tuna fishing is sustainable and then divides that amount up into fishing days for which fishing companies bid.
“We set the minimum price of a day at US$8,000 a day, up from $2,500 at the beginning, but demand was so high that we’ve been getting $12,000 to $14,000 a day,” Kumoru said.
“All our fish stocks are healthy,” said Transform Aqorau, a Solomon Islands lawyer who became the first chief executive of the PNA in 2010, and was largely responsible for introducing the scheme.
“And they are likely are likely to remain healthy if recent levels of exploitation continue,” confirmed John Hampton, chief scientist as the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, the region’s top fisheries scientist.
Like land, those increasingly valuable fish were not created by man: being owned by no one doesn’t mean anyone can take them for their own. Land, oil, the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as fish and wildlife of all kinds were not created by us or for our use: they should belong to all and their value recaptured for the benefit of all. These tiny island nations understand that better than the G7 leaders or any of the so-called developed nations.