1. Territorial
use rights
Nimnaga. K

2. Use Rights
Whenever a fishery is managed by restricting
who can have access to the fishery, how
much fishing activity (fishing effort) individual
participants are allowed, or how much catch
each can take, those with such entitlements
are said to hold use rights. Such use rights
are simply ‘the rights to use’, as recognised or
assigned by the relevant management
authority (whether formal or informal).

3. Forms of Use Rights
 access rights, which permit the holder to take
part in a fishery (limited entry) or to fish in a
particular location (territorial use rights or
‘TURFs’)
 withdrawal rights, which typically involve
quantitative (numerical) limits on resource
usage, either through input (effort) rights or
output (harvest) rights.

4. Forms of use rights
 Territorial use rights
 Input(effort) rights including limited entry
 Output(harvest) rights

5. Territorial Use Rights in Fishing
TURFs may be defined as community held rights of
use (or tenure) and exclusion over the fishery
resources within a specific area and for a period of
time.
Community, territory and a set of rights (including a
“satisfactory” degree of exclusivity and tenure) and
responsibilities are the essential (minimum) descriptive
elements of TURFs.

6.  The territory governed by a TURF can relate to the
surface, the bottom, or to the entire water column
within a specific area.
 The size of the territory will vary with the use, the
resources being harvested and the geographical
characteristics.
 It should be sufficient in size, however, so that use
outside of the territory does not significantly
diminish the value of use within.

7.  A TURF is not so much resource specific as it
is site specific.
 The territory should be readily defensible and
protected by the laws and institutions of the
country.
 The boundaries of the territory should,
therefore, be clearly demarcated and
identifiable.

8. Certain kinds of rights need to be
exercised if TURFs are to be effective
 right of exclusion ; that is, the right to limit or
control access to the territory
 right that needs to be exercised is that of
determining the amount and kind of use within
the territory
 right to extract benefits from the use of the
resources within the territory

9. The extension of national jurisdiction generally
provides individual countries with the right of
exclusion, the right to determine amounts and
kinds of use, and the right to extract benefits.
Localization of a TURF depends more upon the
size of the territory and the specificity of the
ownership than upon the content of the rights.

10. The owner of a TURF can be
 a private individual
 a private individual enterprise
 a group of individuals such as a cooperative, an
association or a community
 a political subdivision such as a town or a
province
 a national government
 a multinational agency

11. In addition, owners of individual TURFs can create a
form of cooperative ownership in which individual rights
are constrained by joint decisions.
Generally, the effectiveness of a TURF will be greatest
where the specificity of the ownership is the highest.
Individuals can usually make decisions more easily than
groups of individuals.
However, with regard to the objective of improving the
welfare of small-scale fishing communities, ownership of
use rights by private individuals could well be damaging.
In these cases, some form of communal ownership of a
TURF will be desirable.

12. Advantages of localized TURFs
 More economically efficient use of the resources
 Improving welfare of small-scale fishing community
 The owner of the TURF can limit the input of capital
labour at the point where the greatest net benefits are
produced
 Opportunity and incentives to manage the resources
within the territory

13. The major, and fundamental, problem is that the
establishment of localized TURFs may require re-
distribution of wealth. The provision of exclusive
rights means that some present users of the
territory are likely to be excluded. Although this
may be socially and economically desirable it may
also be politically difficult.

14. Traditional TURFs and problems of open access
fishery
Territorial Use Rights in fisheries, in the sense of
community-held rights of use over resources within a
territory at the exclusion of others have been known to
exist for centuries. Examples of traditional TURFs are still
found today, among other places, in Brazil, Sri Lanka,
Papua New Guinea, Oceania, Ivory Coast. Many of these
customary rights are now crumbling under the pressures
of population growth, technological change and
commercialization of subsistence fisheries.

15. As it is widely accepted, unrestrained competition
in open-access fisheries leads to expansion of
effort (employment of capital and labor) far beyond
the level which maximizes either economic
benefits or sustainable catch, to the point where
costs become so high and catch so low that no net
economic benefit is being derived. This amounts
to a waste both in terms of the resource and in
terms of capital and labour.

16. A reduction of effort and its control at the optimal level
might be attempted through a number of management
tools or regulations such as catch quotas, gear
restrictions, seasonal and area closures, fishing effort
controls, taxes and licences.Apart from possible
ineffectiveness and induced inefficiencies, the
introduction, monitoring and enforcement of the
regulations involves considerable costs which under
certain circumstances are prohibitively high, in the sense
that they exceed the expected benefits from regulation.

17. Under these circumstances, alternative
management tools which hold a promise for lower
implementation costs through self-management
deserve serious consideration. It is in this light that
the potential of Territorial Use Rights as a
management tool is being studied.

18. Evaluation of TURFs as potential
management tool can be done in terms of
 Eficiency
 Equity
A TURF is an “efficient” management tool if it
provides the means for generating or increasing
the net benefits from a given fishery (or part of the
fishery). A TURF is "equitable" if it provides the
means for improving the distribution of benefits
within the community from the exploitation of the
fishery.

19. TURFs as a means for Increasing Fishery
Net Benefits
 Exclusion of outsiders
 Control over labour and capital
 Dealing with externalities
 Investing to enhance future returns
 Flexibility to adjust

20. TURFS as a means for improving the
distribution of benefits
 Improving local employment opportunities
 Increasing local income, consumption and
nutrition
 Preserving social organization and
reducing conflicts
 Promoting social mobility and “learning by
doing”

21. Improving benefits to society
A TURF may operate in a way beneficial not only
to its members but to the society at large as well,
by conserving resources, preventing
environmental degradation and possibly
generating some government revenues. It is to the
best interest of TURF members to prevent
damaging alterations of the environment such as
water pollution, felling of mangrove forests and
destruction of coral reefs within their territory
because such actions would have a pronounced
negative effect on their livelihood.

22. Finally, TURFs, or at least the most successful of
them, may produce revenues for the society at
large: (a) by saving on management and
enforcement cost; (b) by reducing the need for
costly welfare/development assistance to
depressed fishing communities; and (c) by
generating substantial resource rents, part of which
may be creamed off by the government through
appropriate levies.

23. Examples of TURFs are widespread - some examples
include lagoon fisheries in the Ivory Coast, beach seine
net fisheries along the West African coast, collection of
shellfish and seaweed on a coastal village basis in South
Korea and Japan, and controls over outsiders by fishing
communities in Sri Lanka. Two particularly well-known
examples are the long-standing arrangement in coastal
Japan, where traditional institutions are incorporated in
modern resource management, and the lobster fisheries
on the north-eastern coast of North America, where
fishers have been able to maintain extra-legal control on
entry - exclusion rights. TURFs have a particularly long
history in traditional, small-scale/artisanal and indigenous
fisheries.

24. Reference
 Territorial Use Rights: A Rights Based Approach to
spatial Management, Keith R. Criddle Utah State
University, Mark Herrmann, Joshua A. Greenberg
 Territorial Use Rights in Marine fisheries:
definitions and Conditions by Francis T. Christy,
FAO Fishing and Planning Division
 Territorial Use Rights In Fisheries by Theodore
Panayotou,Faculty of Economics, Kasetsart
University

25. THANK YOU