ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical overview of the international laws, domestic laws, and private regulatory regimes that have been developed to address marine fishery overexploitation. It describes how regulatory regimes addressing overfishing have evolved in four different countries: South Africa, Mexico, New Zealand, and Japan. After accounting for the choices of these case studies, each case study starts with a description of the most important problems concerning marine fishing. The focus is on the overexploitation of particular fish stocks, but related environmental problems such as loss of biodiversity and by-catch also is addressed. Subsequently, the case studies describe how property rights have been established in a particular country and what additional public and private regulations have been implemented to prevent the depletion of fish stocks. The case studies show that each country has followed its own path in governing fish stocks and has its own set of stakeholders which is involved in the governance regime.
