Climate change and credibility of fish stock agreements : the case of the north-east arctic cod

Abstract

We simulate how an increase in the productivity of the North-East Arctic cod stock would affect the Russian-Norwegian cooperation on the management of the stock. The productivity increase is linked to environmental conditions in the sea and to climate change through a temperature-dependent stock-recruitment relationship, where the numbers of recruits is positively related to the sea temperature given the spawning stock biomass. Increased recruitment and productivity of the stock improved the stability of an agreement on joint management. Expressing the closed-loop solution as a series of open-loop equilibrium solutions, studying the issue of reevaluating agreements on shared and straddling fish stocks, highlights the need for better and more flexible management systems that can cope with shifting environmental conditions.