Evaluation of Externality Management Instruments in Marine Fisheries

New Zealand marine fishing activities create many types of environmental externalities, which by law must be internalised. Selection of best internalisation instruments can be aided by following a hierarchical decision process, which first screens the universe of instruments against implementation criteria to establish the feasible set. Instruments in the feasible set can be evaluated against a range of environmental, Treaty of Waitangi, economic, sociocultural and management criteria. This approach to selection can be formalised in decision support software to provide a useful tool for fisheries management agencies.