 I will be talking about fisheries. So let me begin by showing the topic. So I'll be talking about natural resource management, the case of capture fisheries in Africa. No specific paper, but this will draw on some of my own experiences and a couple of other works. So let me begin by providing an outline of what the presentation will look like. So first of all, I will give a very brief introduction of what renewable resources are. And then I'll talk about some stylized facts about fisheries in Africa, and maybe some specifics on Ghana. And then I'll try to compare traditional fisheries, which is small-scale fisheries and industrial fisheries. And then I will pose some questions on why it is a challenge to manage capture fisheries in Africa, and then the way forward. So by way of introduction, as you can see, renewable resources are living resources. Think about forest stocks, think about fish stocks. These resources can replenish itself depending on the rate at which they are extracted. So if we extract them within reasonable limits, we can extract them year after year after year. The present generation will benefit and the future generation will benefit. And if we do not exploit the resource at all, of course the resource will keep growing until it gets to what we call the environmental carrying capacity. If you have a small quantity of biomass of fish in an environment, the growth or the increment, the annual increment in terms of biomass will be smaller than if you have a relatively larger quantity. So these are facts that perhaps we need to know. Now let me just give this simple example. Suppose that this curve here defines the revenue, the total revenue or receipts that can be gotten from extracting and selling fish, capture fisheries, from the capture fisheries. And let us assume that this straight line here is the cost of fishing. And the axis here is the fishing efforts, which could be perhaps the number of trips that you make. Now, as you can see, revenue goes up, hits a maximum and then begin to decline. The cost will increase throughout because the more trips you make, the more expenditure you make on those two tax trips. You will realize that the gap between the revenue and the cost will constitute net revenue or profits. Now, if an individual, if a single person is managing the fisheries, he will seek a level of effort or the number of trips that will generate the highest difference or the biggest difference between the revenue and cost, which is profit. So this will be the economic optimum that society will have to seek. However, even if the harvest continues until we hit this point, we will get the highest revenue but not necessarily the highest profit because the gap between the two here is smaller than the gap here. So this point is the maximum sustainable yield level of effort because this is the point that generate the highest catch that can sustain the stock from year to year. However, it doesn't give us the maximum possible profit from the fishery. So as far as economics are concerned, if our aim is to maximize profit or to get the highest profit possible, we will harvest at a level that is lower than what biologically the system can give us or that the fishery can generate, which is fine. So it means there is no problem. However, there are situations where effort levels are intensified until we get to this point. A situation where if you do not go there to cut the fish, your neighbor will go there and catch it. And we have so many individuals that are out there chasing this fish. So as long as there is the smallest profit to be made, they will continue to invest the effort until they hit this point where profits are zero because the cost of harvesting at that level is the same as the revenue that you obtain at that level. So profits are zero at that point. This will be the open access level of effort. Now, let me just present some facts. Of course we know from those graphs that as a society we should aim at the level of effort that give us the highest economic benefit. So why don't we do that? But before I go into those details, let us now appreciate some facts about Africa. You will realize that the continent lands about 7.6 million tons of fish annually. And the recent estimates indicate that fisheries contributes about 1.26 to the continent's GDP. And in terms of revenue, this is about $24 billion, which is very high. Of this, aquaculture contributes around 3.3 billion. So that's quite low. And we also know that the fisheries sector employs nearly 1% of the labor force between age 15 and 64. And in sub-Saharan Africa where a lot of people depend on fisheries as a source of employment, it employs about 2.1% of the labor force. Per capita fish consumption, however, in Africa is so low. I mean, it's about 9.1 kilograms per year. Although fish mix up about 17.4% of our protein intake on the continent. And as I said, aquaculture is coming up, but it's not very well developed. If you look at the global aquaculture production, Africa contributes about 2.2%. And even South Sahara Africa is doing not that well. It contributes less than 1% to the global aquaculture production. The sad thing is that capture fisheries or wild fisheries are overcapitalized. There is so much capital in the fisheries than what we require. And that has led to biological overfishing, catching more fish than what we should be catching. Indeed, if I go back to this graph, this graph is based on an assumption that even if you have a very small quantity of fish out there in the ocean or in the lake, they will reproduce and eventually, you will get to the carrying capacity if the fish is not harvested from that point. But we know that is not the case because if the quantity of fish within that environment is so small, mating and counter could become seldom and then eventually the stock can completely collapse. So if we make that provision in this graph, you realize that the curve doesn't go down this way. It will turn somewhere at a point. It will just return at some point. Meaning that if we invest an effort level that exceed the turning point of the graph, the entire fishery has collapsed. If you look at the situation in Africa, this is quite an old data set and of course because we do not invest so much in data collection on fisheries in Africa or adequately in data collection in Africa. So we always have to resort to very old data sets. You can just see the catch losses. The catch losses, this means that we are not actually doing the best. We are not doing what we should be doing as far as sustainability of the stocks are concerned. We are over harvesting and therefore we are making losses. And a country like Namibia had catch losses between two million to five million tons of fish annually. So this is quite worrisome. Now, if you look at the fisheries in Ghana and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, we have two main classifications. Sometimes we have the third one. We have the industrial fishing which is usually large flits, mostly steel, big boats, and the fish offshore or they are supposed to fish offshore. In Ghana for instance, they are supposed to fish in areas that are at least 30 meters deep. Do they do that? No. Now these flits, what the nations get from them, the coastal countries get from them is revenue from taxes and licenses. And this constitutes in total about 0.4 billion a year. But the catches are about 25% of the total catches on the continent, implying that if the continent was supposed to invest in catching these fish themselves, they would have made about 3.3 there about billion a year in addition to whatever is already been made. Now then we have the artisanal fisheries or small scale fishes who actually fish for livelihood. They employ low technologies like small boats with outboard motos. They go on day trips. They fish very close to the shore and these fisheries provide jobs. It provides income and food for very low income families, women and children. Managing fisheries in Africa has been a challenge, a big challenge and sometimes we make jokes that if one is able to find a solution to managing the fisheries in Africa, especially the small scale fisheries, that solution will be the general solution and every other fisheries in the world can fit into that general model because it's very complicated. The first problem or the first challenge is about uncertainty and misperceptions. Indeed, fisheries management involves a very good knowledge of biophysical dynamics because you have the fish interacting with the environment so you have to understand the biology of the fish, the way it evolves over time, the way they relate over time and the way they relate to each other, the different species relate to each other and the way they relate to their environment. Without a proper understanding of that, it is very difficult for one to manage those fisheries. Most of the models that we use for management are very oversimplified models. We use biomass model assuming that 10 kilogram of fish is 10 kilogram of fish but if you have 10 kilograms of fish that cannot reproduce, it's not the same as having 10 kilograms made up of five kilogram of maybe males and five kilogram of females so 10 kilogram cannot be 10 kilogram. Age cohorts also matter. If all the fish have reached a point where they cannot reproduce, if you have 10 kilograms, the next day you come there, you have no fish but if you have 10 kilogram of fish that are at the stage where they can easily reproduce, if you come the next year, you'll see that the biomass has increased so we have to care about the science of the fisheries. Indeed, there was an experiment, I think in Norway or so where fisheries managers were put in a lab and then they were supposed to perform an experiment and what was the experiment? They were supposed to harvest from a fishery in that experiment and they were assigned so rights, private property rights over the fisheries in that experiment. What happened? They overfished. So these were fisheries managers that were supposed to have a very good knowledge of how to manage fisheries but they did not understand the biophysical dynamics even in theory to the extent that they heavily overfished. There are also uncertainties which has to be incorporated in trying to model fisheries problems and without having a proper understanding of those uncertainties and how they evolve over time it could be problematic. Now, link to that is also the fact that simple models may not necessarily describe a complex world and this is very linked to the first point I've raised. So we have to have a very good understanding of the complexities and also try to model to a large extent some of those complexities in order for us to arrive at policy outcomes that will be pragmatic. One serious issue is about enforcement of catch rules. This is a serious problem. Both in terms of the artisanal fisheries or the small scale fishers and then the large scale fishers. For the large scale fishers, most fishermen believe that these fishing enterprises are in bed with normally the political elites. So there is a situation where instead of fishing at deeper part of the ocean where the small scale fishers are not able to go they come near the shore especially in the night when the moon is out and then they catch all kinds of fish including the petal trolling that the chair talked about which is very problematic. Now, as far as the small scale fishers are concerned some studies have done extensively on illegal behavior indicates that most of them are also engaged in using methods that are not appropriate for fishing. They use dynamites, some use poisons, some go to the extent of using nets with very small mesh sizes to catch mature and juvenile fish stocks. Some drop lights in the ocean, it shines and then when the moon is out the fish come around the ocean they circulate and they catch as much as possible. When you do that, you reduce the stock level and the rate at which the stock will reproduce tomorrow will be much different from if you had kept the stock at a very, very good level, biologically adequate level. There is also endemic corruption in fisheries governance both at the community level and at the level of a nation. Sometimes the inadequate enforcement of rules and all this corruption comes as a result of some form of mistrust among the fishermen, between the fishermen and the government and this is quite worrying. There are situations where, for instance, fishermen have complained about catch levels going down yet the government comes in to subsidize fishing inputs for political expediency and then as a result the fishermen decide not to obey other rules that the government brings around and that leads to intensify the problem of harvesting of these fish stocks. There are also harmful subsidies, just like I've said there are situations where government subsidize fishing boats they subsidize outboard motors and they subsidize fishing nets. So we already know that catch per unit effort is going down in other words, fishermen are getting less and less and less catch any time they go out to fish year by year yet government is subsidizing input so it becomes easier for them to target and catch more and more fish. At the end of the day, if we see that threshold the stocks will collapse and many lives will be at risk. There is also this situation of poorly designed or top-down management processes and the ignorance of social factors or considerations within fishing communities. Government make laws or state institutions make laws and they expect the fishing communities to enforce these laws. Sometimes these laws contradict whatever institutions or it's in conflict with the institutions that are already in place in the fishing community and these laws will not go anywhere. For instance, if you go to most fishing communities in Ghana you'll be amazed at how things are organized. They have the chief fisherman who has a role to play they have the fish queen or the fish mommy who plays a very important role in most cases the fish mommy has to the woman I mean the chief, the equivalent of the chief she decides on even the price of fish on daily basis. So she looks at the catch of the first three boats and then decides that today one kilogram of this particular fish has to sell at this price. So if you set rules from the top without involving the community and taking into consideration the social dynamics these rules may not fly and that has also been one of the challenges. Now what is the way forward? Of course we don't have a solution we can only speculate on a few things. First of all, fisheries policies have to be incentive compatible. If those in the communities don't feel that these policies are there to help them they will not implement them because they will not see eye to eye with the authorities that are bringing these policies along. You have to respect those institutions and you have to make provision for the various subgroups within those communities and with that you may be able to achieve something. Now community-wide institutions must be considered in policy design and implementation you look at the role of all individuals and make sure that you address all the concerns of the various key holders within the community otherwise these policies might not fly. There are also perhaps to mention things like religious norms that are overlooked there are a couple of things that when states make these policies they overlook some otherwise important policy measures which they do not implement and then those policy measures are left to go which could otherwise be very, very effective. For example, in Ghana at the point where some fishing communities were using dynamites and poisons to fish they invoke religious norms. So they went to the sea the fishermen went to the beach and then took an oath that we are no longer going to do this otherwise the sea gods should kill us. After some time the practice stopped so we have to respect those norms and then we have to factor those norms into those processes of policy making. We also have to look at the union's factors such as climate factors that may affect fisheries and then make sure that we adapt our policies accordingly and then most importantly the biological dynamics of the stock has to be well understood meaning we have to do all the investment to make sure that we understand biophysical dynamics much better and I think the outcome could be different. Thank you so much.