SOURCES SOUGHT
A -- FISHERY MANAGEMENT
- Notice Date
- 7/1/2009
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541712
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Biotechnology)
- Contracting Office
- Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service, James J. Howard Marine Sciences Lab, 74 Magruder Road, Highlands, New Jersey, 07732, United States
- ZIP Code
- 07732
- Solicitation Number
- SWFSC108
- Archive Date
- 7/21/2009
- Point of Contact
- pamela.g.jones, Phone: 8585467009
- E-Mail Address
-
pamela.g.jones@noaa.gov
(pamela.g.jones@noaa.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- We are looking for someone with the knowledge and capabilities as follows: Section C - Description/Specifications/Work Statement 1. Background Develop a contract-mechanism design theroetic model of incentive agreements for marine conservation and fishery management. Organizations that promote effective fisheries management and endangered species protection are increasingly making use of incentive-based approaches to encourage local resource users to better conserve resources. For example, novel tools for conservation that incorporate incentives directly in a contract (such as an incentive agreement or a buyout, which includes fisheries buybacks) are being implemented in the United States and abroad. In a conservation incentive agreement, conservation investors negotiate quid-pro-quo contracts by which resource users forego harvests or other activities in exchange for benefits provided by the investors. Monitoring of the resource users is required to condition benefits on conservation performance. With a buyout, users generally give up resource rights permanently in exchange for a one-time benefit, but ongoing enforcement (and monitoring) is needed to ensure compliance with the terms of the deal. Some buyouts are being structured to more closely resemble an easement or a lease, where rights are given up temporarily in exchange for annual benefits, or where rights are modified to preclude the use of particular gears. These types of incentives are akin to an incentive agreement. Conservation incentive agreements are of interest because they involve ongoing interaction between the resource users and conservation investors, where the investors provide an external incentive in relation to preexisting enforcement institutions. Furthermore, conservation incentive agreements have been increasingly adopted and, although their use in terrestrial settings has gathered some attention, applications in marine contexts have yet to receive systematic review. Their use is growing, with a recent prime example being The Nature Conservancy buyout of fishing vessels along the Central California coast with a conservation orientation. Given that experimentation is fairly recent, there is little empirical evidence to suggest how they perform or how they are best designed and implemented. There is also very little theoretical literature on this topic. This study will develop a contract-theoretic model of marine incentive agreements and it will assess how these agreements can be optimally designed, in particular for marine conservation and fisheries management. The project will complement previous work funded by NMFS, including a feasibility study of a leatherback turtle incentive agreement in Isabel, Solomon Islands (Richard Rice), a global study of payments for sea turtle conservation and a study of conservation payments in Tanzania (Paul Ferraro), analysis of the design and impacts of incentive agreements for leatherback turtles in Rendova, Solomon Islands, and Jamursba Medi, Indonesia (Heidi Gjertsen), and a recent buyout/easement in the Morro Bay trawl fishery that builds on work by Curtis and Squires (2007). These and other case studies will be used to guide the development of the model. 2. Methodology The context of interest is a locality with well defined resource users (the "players"), a system of external enforcement, and existing institutions and norms of behavior. Conservation investors, acting as a unit, enter the picture with an offer of benefits to the players as a function of the players' behavior. If the parties agree to the offer, then a conservation incentive agreement is formed. The agreement's objective is to motivate the players to better manage resources than they were before. The key to the modeling exercise is the development of a framework for examining the interaction between local, preexisting enforcement institutions and the new element of external enforcement to be introduced by the conservation investors. This will require going beyond standard models in the economics literature, which typically focus on single enforcement institutions and narrow questions of information and incentives. The model will be game theoretic and thus include the possible actions of the players (the local resource users) and external parties, a specification of the information parties have over time, and their payoffs. More precisely, the model will start with a description of an existing social/economic structure - including the nature of contractual relationships, feasible productive actions, norms, and mix of enforcement institutions - and then represent the feasible ways in which a new external party (the group of conservation investors) can interact with the players to shape incentives. The specification of productive actions includes a description of the effects on the natural resource of interest. For example, harvesting degrades habitat, causes bycatch, or depletes a stock. The third party group of investors can form an agreement with resource users whereby investors give monetary benefits when the resource users behave in a particular way. The investors may also install a monitoring technology. The model will be used to determine the range of enforceable agreements and to assess the optimal way for the external party to structure its involvement. The model will demonstrate that entry of the new external party may have complicated consequences. Specifically, the external party's involvement may do much more than to simply alter conservation incentives by the amount of externally provided benefits; it may also have dramatic effects on the functioning of existing contractual relationships and existing enforcement institutions (including incentives to share information, to engage in other productive actions, to collude, etc.). The modeling framework will facilitate a full analysis of such possible effects and reveal how they depend on the nature of social and economic structures and preexisting enforcement institutions. The model will be developed with the following elements: 3. Technological Setting Actions The harvesting technology and the ecosystem are taken as exogenous, so the range of possible productive actions is fixed. The objective is to change the actions that the players choose, in order to advance a goal for resource use. Here we are mainly concerned with the primary activity that we are trying to regulate (harvesting), as well as other actions that cause welfare effects (e.g. punishment). We also consider impacts on resource stocks, preferences/payoffs/description of welfare, and externalities outside the set of players (welfare component outside the player set). In game-theory terminology, the technological setting defines the actions, timing, and outcomes of a game. Information The second part of the technology is a description of the feasible ways in which information flows between players and to the external party. This includes the extent to which the primary activity is observable within the local community, to external enforcement institutions, and to the external party. It also includes the knowledge that players have about how others are responding to information (such as whether one player knows whether another player will punish him/her for misbehaving). At this point, the players' feasible strategies can be defined. 4. Existing Institutions (National/Regional) and Payoffs Existing enforcement systems can be represented as a mapping from verifiable items (including primary actions and other actions) to decisions made by external authorities. External authorities could, for instance, impose penalties or changes in ownership of property when a player violates a local rule. Also under this heading are other aspects of the strategic setting that are outside the players' control, such as outside opportunities in unmodelled sectors. The components shown above are sufficient to represent as a game the strategic setting of resource use in absence of the conservation investors. 5. Contractual Relationships With a well-specified game defined by items 1 and 2 above, the next step is a theory of how the players coordinate their behavior. This study extends the literature by taking the view that behavior is coordinated through agreements in contractual relationships, and that many different interrelated contractual relationships can exist at once. Thus, the modeling framework specifies the set of groups of players that have the capacity to make an agreement. The set of contractual relationships may be influenced or constrained by some network structure (describing communication channels, authority relations, etc.) and geographical boundaries. A given contractual relationship can either contribute to the social objectives or detract from them. On the positive side, having a contractual relationship may help a group of players identify and coordinate on an efficient strategy profile. On the negative side, the same contractual relationship can cause a problem by engaging in collusion, side-contracting, or manipulation relative to a plan of cooperation in the larger society of players. Critical to determining whether contracting in a relationship has a positive or negative effect is an understanding of the methods of enforcing contracts. These include links between primary activity and other actions, the need for repeated interaction, and the relative components of self-enforcement and external enforcement. A government, NGO, or other external party could be included in a contractual relationship, but it may be simpler to think of third parties as just imposing some rules and influencing payoffs. 6. Norms and Standards of Behavior This analytical element is the strategy profile/behavioral norm that describes how players behave before and after the external conservation investors arrive. The modeling exercise will investigate how an external party (i) alters the technology by making decisions with welfare consequences (such as providing benefits) and (ii) facilitates the formation of a new agreement between players. For example, an NGO may provide benefits when resource users harvest at target levels, and the NGO may also help the players settle on an agreement that coordinates the players on meeting the target. The key distinction between a preexisting external enforcer, such as a government, and an entering third party is that we treat the former as exogenous with pre-specified interests, whereas the latter is designing a level of involvement and new behavioral norm. That is, the entering third party changes the payoffs and helps coordinate the players on a strategy. It is important to note that enforcement can take two forms: self/internal enforcement (in equilibrium, players conform to the agreement) and external enforcement (external parties alter the payoffs of the game). An entering third party can influence both. Given the game and context described above and the feasible manners in which the external party can interact (actions, payoffs), the model will be used to determine the optimal way for this party to structure its involvement and what kind of agreement it can implement. For example, the following scenarios correspond to real-world agreements: a. If there are insufficient external penalties (for example, if government does not have adequate resources to enforce existing laws), a new third party can add sanctions and improve the prospects for effective resource management. b. A new third party can expand the scope of contracts (and improve the prospects for resource management) by introducing a monitoring technology that existing players do not have. c. In some cases, existing norms interfere with a new agreement; i.e., there may be resistance to adopting a new strategy even if it is an equilibrium. d. Existing local contractual relationships may disrupt a new agreement, in that players engage in collusion or side deals. e. Existing local contractual relationships may support a new agreement by either "completing" it (filling in details) or helping to enforce it (through exercise of existing authority relations). f. A new party may be able to help coordinate the behavior of the players if the players do not have the contractual relationships that allow them to coordinate on the necessary behavioral changes to sustain an agreement. The research will use case studies to guide the development of a model of marine incentive agreements. The following cases may be analyzed as case studies: In Jamursba Medi, Indonesia, a NGO provides scholarships in exchange for respecting a no-take leatherback beach. The scholarships are provided based on a pledge rather than verifiable performance metrics. Although there were already formal laws against harvesting leatherbacks and their eggs, government enforcement was lacking because of the remoteness of the area. This case will thus correspond to scenario #1 above. In addition, this corresponds to #5, as the local dynamics are such that those that benefit from the agreement are able to keep the others from breaking it. In Rendova, Solomon Islands, a NGO provides payments to individuals and a community development fund when nesting leatherbacks are reported and when the nest hatches. These activities are monitored by a NGO representative. Previous to this intervention, all leatherbacks and their eggs were harvested by the community. The monitoring technology that was introduced by the agreement was photographs to document the nesting and hatching activity. In Mafia Island, Tanzania, a NGO provides payments to individuals for reporting a nesting leatherback and for each hatchling that emerges. Previous to the payment intervention, monitors patrolled the area, but 50% of eggs were poached. The payments have reduced poaching to zero. The agreement has provided incentives for self-enforcement, as individuals keep their neighbors from poaching eggs for which they are entitled to a payment. In Laguna San Ignacio, Mexico, a NGO provides payments to a community group in exchange for their protection of grey whale habitat. The area is monitored annually to verify compliance with the terms of the contract and the payment is released upon successful results. The contract was signed in perpetuity. Similar to the case of Jamursba Medi, the context is such that those that benefit from the agreement are able to keep the others from breaking it. In Morro Bay, USA, a NGO purchased federal trawling permits and trawling vessels from commercial fishermen in exchange for their support of bottom trawling closed areas. The NGO is leasing back its permits with restrictions to permit additional fishing effort that uses sustainable methods. This buyout can be seen as a special case of an incentive agreement. 7. Performance Measures (Output, Deliverables, Milestones) The outputs of this project will be the development of a modeling tool and a final report that includes a description of the model, analysis of optimal agreements under various scenarios, and a discussion of the implications of our findings for the design and implementation of conservation agreements in different settings. In addition, it is anticipated that the findings will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal (and possibly a policy- and case-study oriented version to a marine policy or conservation journal) and presented in conferences and workshops. Furthermore, we expect this to be the basis for further theoretical papers and case studies. 8. Timeline The project will begin on July 15, 2009 and be completed by April 30, 2010.
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- Place of Performance
- Address: 8604 La Jolla Shores Drive, La Jolla, California, 92037, United States
- Zip Code: 92037
- Zip Code: 92037
- Record
- SN01863611-W 20090703/090702003136-23667b2064f185c08e7f15ab110829f0 (fbodaily.com)
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