A goal analysis of alternative tuna fishery arrangements between Indonesia and Japan

Abstract

With the advent of extended maritime jurisdictions, new arrangements will be sought between fisheries resource owners and distant-water fishing fleets that may want to share the use of fishery resources. Each party has motives for wanting to exploit the fishery, and each has strengths and weaknesses in doing so. The purpose of this study was to develop a logical process to identify arrangements that are fair and profitable for both parties. As a case study, we examined conflicts and agreements of interest between Indonesia and Japan with respect to arrangements they might have for exploiting Indonesia's tuna. Thirty-seven possible arrangements between the two countries were evaluated by a multinational, multidisciplinary team employing goal analysis, an optimization technique for dealing with multiple objectives. The arrangements differed in the following respects: type of fishing operation (all of them longline, but differing with respect to vessel size and other characteristics); kind of processing (cold storage, canning, or freezer-carrier operations); ownership (Indonesian, joint-venture, or Japanese); base of operation (Indonesia or Japan); participating Japanese sector (small-scale tuna fishermen, medium-scale tuna fishermen, or traders and large-scale fishery companies); and marketing alternatives (fresh fish, frozen fish, or canned-goods markets).

Tradeoffs were examined among eleven goals and constraints that might be involved in negotiating an arrangement: capital investment, return on investment, employment, foreign exchange earnings, and technology transfer for Indonesia; capital investment, return on investment, employment, tuna supply, fishermen's profits, and traders' profits for Japan.

This study found many points of agreement of interests between the two countries, to the extent that they can share in efficient and profitable fishing, processing, and marketing operations where both parties can enjoy the benefits. In particular, freezer-carrier operations combined with Indonesia-based fishing offer many advantages over the recent fee fishing arrangement. Genuine conflicts of interests also were found in tradeoffs between employment and operating costs and in how the ownership and profits of the operations are shared between the two countries. Although results are preliminary and require further refinement and validation before they can assist with real fishery negotiations, this approach to exploring new options for bilateral fishery arrangements has great potential and should be pursued to the point where it can be utilized in practice.