Enclosing the Commons: Individual Transferable Quotas in the Nova Scotia Fishery

In 1991 the Atlantic groundfish fishery in Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick experienced diminishing resources and overcapacity in the inshore mobile-gear fleet. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans instituted individual quotas (IQs) for this sector of the fishery. Soon thereafter the IQs became individual transferable quotas (ITQs). Enclosing the Commons explores the industrial micropolitics associated with the creation of the ITQ Group and the push to reduce overcapacity through economic concentration of quota shares.This important study provides the first critical examination of an ITQ approach to fisheries management.

Richard Apostle is a Professor of Sociology at Dalhousie University. He is currently working on a project dealing with socio-economic development in the Faroe Islands.
Bonnie McCay is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Ecology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and their relationships to fisheries management.
Knut H. Mikalsen is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tromso. He is currently engaged in research on issues of stakeholder management in European fisheries.
The authors previously collaborated in the writing Community, Market, and the State on the North Atlantic Rim.