Fisheries in developing countries are often characterized by poorly defined property rights, open access, and overcapitalization. The authors explore how trade liberalization generally is beneficial, but combining it with open access may reduce a country’s welfare and fish stocks, especially when reinforced by bad subsidies.

Trade liberalization may also promote development of property rights in response to increased fish exploitation. The WTO can help facilitate trade by reclassifying subsidies to eliminate bad ones and distinguish good ones.

This analysis of the fishers’ compliance with regulations in Lake Victoria, Tanzania, gives support to the traditional economics-of-crime model and shows that the extension of the basic deterrence model can lead to a richer model with substantially higher explanatory power.

This paper studies technical efficiency and skipper skill (and explores potential proxies), using Tanzanian fishery data for the two major species, Nile perch and dagaa. The relative level of efficiency is high in both fisheries, and several observable variables linked to skipper skill significantly explain the efficiency level. However, given the rapidly depleting fish stocks in Lake Victoria, increased efficiency at the aggregate level is only possible if fishing effort is limited.

This study of the deleterious effect on fishing by the water hyacinth invasion of Lake Victoria found an unusual positive: the decline of fish catchability caused by the the abundance of water hyacinths has paradoxically stopped or at least postponed serious overfishing.

Reform of the water and sanitation sector is occuring in many countries, and offers the potential to improve services to all. Of particular concern, however, is the sitation of the poor, and reform must be designed so that they recieve increased access to affordable services.

A key issue in this regard is water pricing, which is one of the main variables affecting the distribution of benefits between different stakeholders.

The water tariffs currently in use in most cities in South Asia are not accomplishing their principal objectives. They are not generating sufficient revenues to ensure that utilities can recover their financial costs. They are not sending the correct economic signals to households, i.e., that water is scarce and must be treated as a valuable commodity. They are not helping the majority of the poor households, many of whom are not connected to the piped distribution system.