Incentives to Conserve Marine Biodiversity
Practitioners of marine biodiversity conservation are progressively turning to approaches based on incentives. They hope it is going to persuade people to modify behaviors that negatively affect natural habitat and marine biodiversity. The government took too long to get involved, but now they are. More hope is visible as far as saving marine life is the discussion. The essay discusses incentives to conserve marine biodiversity within the framework of impure public goods by analyzing externalities, technology and economic incentives involved.
Impure Public Goods
Goods that are consumed by everyone in society or no one at all are referred to as public goods. Public goods branch out into impure and pure public goods. Pure public good are perfectly non-excludable and non-rivalrous when in consumption. Impure public goods satisfy the two conditions for public goods to a certain extent. Marine biodiversity is an impure public good. It is non-rivalrous because marine life is not owned by specific groups of people but it is excludable because the government can make certain areas unattainable.
Marine life conservation and exploitation brings about many negative and positive externalities. Analysis of the externalities should be done in order to realize the most favourable outcome. One Negative externality is fishing too much. Because of the returns associated with fishing, nowadays many people fish in very large amounts. That has led to a significant decrease in marine life. The amount of fish usually caught supersedes the amount of fish consumed by Americans by much. That means a huge amount of fish is caught just to be thrown away as waste a few weeks later. Such overexploitation needs to be dealt with quickly.
Otherwise, the human race is going to kill most of the marine life and they are going to have a huge amount of garbage from their activities. That brings us to the second negative externality of exploiting marine biodiversity to the fullest. The huge amount of garbage from the excess fish is thrown into water bodies. Humans have a bad habit of throwing garbage into water bodies and killing fish in the process. The irony of the scenario depicted here is that the excess fish that was killed helps in the killing of the remaining ones in water bodies.
Water bodies take up about seventy eight percent of the world. The people who decided to throw garbage must have assumed since the water is so much, it is hard to contaminate it to levels that are significantly dangerous to marine life. However, it is quite possible to do that and the United States is proving it by dumping much garbage and even oil into water bodies. As a result, fish are dying in the millions every year. That trend is going to continue unless something is done. Marine conservation brings about most of the positive externalities except the economic one.
Marine life is a big American income generator in industries such as tourism and fishing. Because of that though, the government has not been quick to act on urgent matters affecting marine life conservation. Therefore, the financial aspect of marine life is both a positive and negative externality. Another positive externality is more fish in the oceans and lakes than currently. Methods used to conserve marine life help to increase the population of fish in the sea. Because human population is getting extremely high levels, high fish population is much more necessary than ever.
It is, therefore, necessary to invest largely on marine life conservation so that the excess amount of fish can keep sustaining humanity and other animals that depend on them. Even though conservation can be a bit expensive, it brings many returns in the end. The large amount of fish caused by marine conservation is going to help boost the economy through sufficient fishing. Conservation can allow a balance to exist in the water bodies so that fishing is done adequately enough to sustain the high levels of fish and income.
Technology
Various technologies are involved with marine life conservation and exploitation. Not enough resources are spent on conservation technology. The same cannot be said of exploitation technology. Over the years, Americans have spent millions of dollars on research and manufacturing of technology that help in the killing of marine life. Machines exist to track high numbers of fish in certain areas but only one or two devices are being researched that are going to help in conserving marine life. Technology to detect garbage in oceans, for example, would serve much better purpose than technology to detect fish.
It would help to clean up the oceans of the garbage thrown there. As a result, marine life is going to flourish under the less poisonous conditions. Another way to do that is by investing more in research and manufacture of oil spill cleanup machines. The United States spills petroleum in large amounts into the ocean, consequently killing large amounts of fish at a time. The technology used to clean up oil spills is very slow, thus increasing the number of marine life killed per spill. The government needs to fund research on machines or other types of revolutionary technology that can clean up the oil spills in a few hours or even minutes.
Economic Incentives
Marine exploitation is mainly because of economic incentives. The fishing industry is a very large industry in the United States. That is a reason that the government needs to invest in marine life conservation as current patterns are going to leave the industry with no economic incentives. Because of the expensive nature of conservation techniques, the government needs to partner with none governmental organizations that are concerned with marine life conservation. Doing so is going to help speed up the process of conserving marine life while making it cheaper.
Conclusion
The main incentives for conserving marine biodiversity should be to save less populated fish from extinction, saving humanity and saving the economy in that order. Saving marine life that is almost extinct should be the main motivator to invest more in conservation techniques. Humanity is also growing in numbers and fish have always been a major part of humanity’s diet. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure the survival of marine life in order to feed such large numbers.
The economic incentives brought about by the industry are also too eccentric to ignore. Fishing and marine tourism bring in billions for the government in taxes each year. That means the fish have been a part of the economic progress of the country. Due to that fact, it is important to ensure the survival of the industry by saving its raw materials. In conclusion, after analyzing the topic, within the framework of impure public goods, conservation of marine biodiversity is a necessity in the society.
Works Cited
Arriagada, Rodrigo and Charles Perrings. "Paying for International Environment Public Goods." A Journal of the Human Environment (2011): 798-806. Print.
Bulte, Erwin H, Cornelis G van Kooten and Timothy Swanson. "Economic Incentives and Wildlife Conservation." Economic Incentives and Wildlife Conservation (2003): 1-15. Print.
