Evaluating the role of market-based instruments in protecting marine ecosystem services in wild-caught fisheries

Over the last few decades there has been increasing concern about the sustainability of wild-caught fisheries. Ecosystem-based fisheries management and the use of market-based instruments represent promising approaches to promote sustainable fisheries. However, little is known about the extent to which market-based instruments align with the principles of ecosystem-based management. In this paper, we evaluate seven market-based instruments applied to wild-caught fisheries against an adapted version of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment typology to measure how well they address marine ecosystem services. Our results indicate that market-based instruments used in wild-caught fisheries do not explicitly address all marine ecosystem services in the text of their standards. While almost all address provisioning services, they generally do not address regulating, cultural, or supporting services. The explicit incorporation of ecosystem services into market-based instruments may offer an opportunity to better support the goals of ecosystem-based fisheries management and improve the sustainability of wild-caught fisheries. The historical focus on stock management, the breadth in the missions of implementing organizations, and the barriers to evaluating ecosystem services are likely contributors to the slow uptake of ecosystem service-oriented requirements.