ABSTRACT
Marine Ecosystem Services are increasingly valuable to society as coastal and oceanic resources become increasingly scarce relative to population and its income. Policies that include the Payment of Ecosystem Services (PES) are a very important complement to the more traditional approaches such as direct regulation and enforcement. Not only do they tap into the value of ecosystems to fund their protection, but they also have the potential to curb demand in an economically efficient way, reducing the pressure that makes crossing beyond the carrying capacity and other ecosystem boundaries an all too frequent outcome. Mexico has important examples of PES that draw central lessons regarding
instrument design, implementation and political economy challenges; all of these are highly relevant for improving the use of economic instruments in the context of developing countries. One of them is the establishment of a fee per tourist to visit the marine protected
areas. There are concerns that the very success of the reefs is bringing associated environmental damage that threatens their sustainable use. To estimate the reaction of visitors to different fee levels, we carried out a Contingent Valuation survey, and constructed with its results an aggregate demand for marine parks. This demand was then divided by seasons and nationalities, to explore the benefits and costs of differentiating fees, looking at both the revenue-maximizing and the welfare-maximizing fees. We discuss how these fees would change when environmental damage functions
are taken into account. The recommendation is that increasing fees up to the point where they cover both private and environmental costs would bring the highest amount of economic benefit compatible with the sustainable use of these complex and wondrous marine ecosystems. But, while PES may be reducing the damage to coastal and marine ecosystems,
there are other current policies which may be increasing damage. Some of the most harmful ones are the incentives that increase relative profitability in fisheries. One
example of these is the fuel subsidy for fishing activities. By increasing relative profitability in the short term, these subsidies increase the pressure on fishery resources, which in the long run can lead to declining stocks and eventually to a loss in productivity, reducing profitability and a worsening of the community’s quality of life. Additionally, these transfers create multiple market distortions or externalities, including increased bycatch1 of non-targeted species, marine pollution and CO2 emissions. Currently theMexican government disburses large amounts of money to support
fisheries, but, far from contributing to their improvement, the productivity of fishermen is decreasing. Moreover, these resources are spent incurring a high opportunity cost and to the detriment of public finances. We discuss the impacts of subsidies in the fishing industry that result from market distortions. Later we provide a measure of the implicit subsidy, which adds up to the existent explicit subsidy, and discuss the decoupling as a neutral or positive instrument, and when it is attached to the adoption of more efficient and environmentally friendly technologies. We propose and analyse a decoupling strategy as part of a portfolio of economic instruments for the sustainability of marine resources.
