Trade-off between benefits, distribution and employment in fisheries: An application to the artisanal fishery in common sardine and anchovy in the Bio-Bio Region

This research analyzes the effect(s) of the reallocation quota among fishermen organizations which are associated to Artisanal Extractive Regime (RAE), upon the benefit distribution of those organizations, and the possible relationship or connect among this benefit distribution, the maximum benefit and the employment. In order to achieve this objective, Generating Techniques were used, which emerge as a subset of Multi-objective Programming. The implementation is based on data about Chilean sardine and anchovy from Biobio region, Chile, for 2011. The model specification includes a review about the goals commonly treated in the literature such as economic efficiency and employment generation. However, the analyzed fishery shows a growing connect among fishermen due to the quota distribution. Taking this in consideration, it has been included a third objective related to the equity level in income distribution among the fishermen organizations where a set of Pareto optimal solutions were obtained from the three goals already proposed. The research concludes that the maximum benefit, maximum employment and maximum equity levels may be improved through optimal trip redistributions within the organizations. The large vessels emerge as the principal recipient of this fishing trips, at the expense of the smaller vessels (boats). Despite this, the trips done by large vessels came up to be less than what happens in the fishery, regardless of the objective chosen. Also, it was found a trade-off between equity-benefit and equity-employment goals, so that increasing levels in benefit or employment will decrease the equity (in the optimum max equity is similar to min. inequity). Finally, considering a scenery where the quota is distributed up to a 10% from smaller organizations to bigger organizations, little changes in the individual levels of benefits, employment and equity were found. Also, the Pareto optimal frontiers were compared under redistribution and base sceneries, observing slight changes in the slopes of this frontiers.