Climate Action 2016-2017

COUNTRY PERSPECTIVES
who brought their catches back to the farms,
and during this period the law prevented any
urbanisation from taking place.
During these centuries, boats were small and
dangerous and fishing gear was primitive and
inefficient, but there was plenty of fish. In the
first decades of the 20th century this changed
dramatically as the fishing fleet was motorised
and generally modernised. Of course this strong
fishing sector brought great wealth to our
society, and we managed to build schools and
roads, and import cars and such like; in short, to
establish a modern and fairly advanced society
in the decades following the Second World War.
But then, in the early 1970s, it became
clear that the fishing sector was heading for
collapse. First, it was necessary to exclude
foreign fleets from the waters off Iceland and
establish an exclusive economic zone, in line
with international developments. Domestically, it
was clear that if the trend continued at the same
pace for a few more years the industry would
be catching fewer and fewer tons of fish, even
while investing more and more. Each company
had to invest more money in better ships to have
a chance of catching the few fish that were left
more quickly than the others. It was a classic
case of the law of diminishing returns: the
industry was facing imminent bankruptcy while
depleting the stocks.
At this point, in 1983, an entirely new set
of rules for the fishing sector was introduced
by law. These stated that no one could fish in
Icelandic waters without have a fishing quota,
a designated percentage of the total allowable
catch of each species. The percentage each
boat was allocated was based on the quantity
it had landed in the preceding years; the total
allowable catch was determined by the Ministry
of Fisheries, based on annual recommendations
from the Marine Research Institute.
A few years later, a new law was passed
providing for the transfer of quotas, which meant
that an efficient fishing company could buy
quotas from another company that was going
out of business or one that wanted to switch to
another fish species. This system of transferable
quotas had several faults and brought problems
to many, especially to small fishing towns which
might suddenly discover that their quota had
been sold to a larger town somewhere. Also,
there are recurrent debates in the country about
the extent to which the fishing companies
should pay levies for their access to the fishing
stocks, the common natural resource of the
Icelandic nation. But there were two decisively
positive consequences the quota system
entailed: the fish stocks were preserved, and the
industry was brought out of the red and into the
black – back into profit.
Image by the Icelandic association of fisheries, SFS.
POSITIVE OUTCOMES
What we as a nation have gained in economic
terms is considerable. It has been calculated
that Iceland saves what amounts to its annual
GDP every 20 years by using geothermal house
heating instead of oil. Furthermore, many of our
fishing companies are very well off now, and
they have been expanding into other industries
and to other countries. At the same time, many
of them strive to make better use of what is
brought ashore, to make valuable products
from what used to be thrown away a couple
of decades ago, such as the bones, heads,
intestines and skin.
What I find interesting in these stories, in
the development I have briefly outlined, is that
the movement from short-sighted exploitation
to controlled and sustainable use of valuable
resources has not been driven by subsidies.
The net result for us as a nation of using green
energy and of carefully controlling the utilisation
of our marine resources has not been increased
costs but, quite the contrary, sharply rising profits
– in both cases.
While appreciating the fact that natural resources
are not equally distributed among nations, I strongly
believe that it is worthwhile to give our experience in
Iceland some careful thought.
Geothermal power plant.
Image by Gunnar Svanberg.
Dr Guðni Th. Jóhannesson took office as
President of Iceland in August 2016 (http://
gudnith.is). He was previously a Professor of
history at the University of Iceland and has
also taught at Reykjavik University, Bifröst
University and the University of London. He
has written numerous books and essays on
Iceland’s history, including works about the
Cod Wars, the Icelandic presidency and the
2008 banking collapse.
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