Today marks the second anniversary* of this blog. I started blogging two years ago with the following awkward paragraph:
While economists-cum-bloggers seem to be in excess supply, the shadow value of this blog need not be zero. As an economist interested in development economics and law and economics and whose focus is on agricultural development policy, I also hope to offer a unique contribution to the policy debate.
Since then, my writing has come a long way, and my interest in law and economics has been replaced by my interest in food policy. As a consequence of blogging and tweeting, I have also made several new friends and acquaintances, and my research has had an impact beyond the Ivory Tower.
Moreover, the mere act of writing for a general audience has forced me to think much more carefully about my research topics, which has in turn generated new research ideas. So it looks as though blogging need not be a substitute for research. Rather, it can actually be a complement to research.
Would It Kill Olivier De Schutter to Consider Incentives?
Overfishing is becoming increasingly recognized for the ecological disaster that it is. The capacity of the global aggregate fishing fleet is at least double of what is needed to exploit the oceans sustainably, and fishing methods such as industrial bottom trawling have proved particularly destructive. Add to this the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, leading to increased sea temperatures and ocean acidification, oil spills, agricultural and industrial run-off, pollution from aquaculture, and the enormous accumulation of plastic debris in water, and the critical situation for marine wildlife becomes clear.
That’s UN special rapporteur on the right to food Olivier De Schutter writing in — where else? —The Guardian last week.
Not once in his op-ed does De Schutter even remotely consider the idea that we already have a good mechanism in place to regulate overfishing and the depletion of the world’s stock of fish.