The topic of this case study is the collapse of cod in the Atlantic ocean in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The main. Cod was a very abundant resource from the XVth century until the XXth century whe the development of new technologies engendered a huge increase of catches and led to the collapse because of this overexploitation. The federal government is one of the main decision making, and has worked to protect the population of cod and introduced policies with the goal of undoing damage incurred by a lack of policy enforcement that lead to the destruction of this population. In 1992 the Federal Government was forced to close the Newfoundland Fishery. But other stakeholders take part into the decision making : First, the scentists and experts who make estimations about the amount of stock and have an influence in the process, then, the industrial lobbys that want to maximize their production and their interest also have an inflence on the government that can pass laws that help those interests. The United Nations (U.N.) also has a presence in this issue, through the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO).  The U.N. examines where the main producers of cod are located along with the processes currently used in the collection of this.

In 1992 the Federal Government was forced to close the Newfoundland Fishery; demonstrating the dire position of cod in the Atlantic as a total ban on fishing affect every possible stakeholder, including the Federal Government themselves. In the past, the federal government had set a Exclusive Economic Zone in 1977 of 200 nautic miles from the coasts. This decision excluded every foreign ship to fish in those zones and to reduce the amount of fishing. However, the new technologies increased even more the fishing and the decision was made in 1992 to completely forbid cod fishing.

To avoid having to take any further extreme measures both Canada and the United States have put more effort and resources into its protection.  In Canada there is work done by both the federal and provincial government.  In 2003, three federal-provincial Cod Action Teams were created, with Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador and the Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI).  Strategically, the creation of these teams is a very effective move, allowing for each province or group of provinces to have their own team, but the overarching involvement of the federal government allows for a greater number of resources available to the provinces but also allows for a cohesion among each provinces action plans to protect this population.

North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Convention is an international/global agreement on protecting the waters of North Atlantic and everything within it, including the Atlantic cod species. The convention under Article I states that the coastal states of North Atlantic (Canada and United States) have jurisdiction on the living resources that are in the 200 nautical miles boundary from where territorial sea is measured. (NAFO,2004) The jurisdiction includes rights for exploiting, exploring, managing and conserving resources that lie within the area. Article II of the convention states that only contracting parties of NAFO can have their vessel in these waters. The importance of this convention allows protection on Atlantic cod stocks because it creates a border preventing people from countries not on the contracting parties to come into these waters and fishing in it. This inhibits illegal fishing which will further deplete the stock and allows legal legislations to finally be in place because now the law has a concrete area to control.

The World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) is also a stakeholder in the process . It argues strongly that the cod population is struggling to grow in its population and that this is an indicator and a warning as to what can happen with overfishing and lack of regulations.  As a non-governmental organization, they are unable to impose new policy, however this does not prevent the lobbying of government as well as the WWF taking on their own initiatives.

Transparency is a big issue for Cod fishing. Those different stakeholders have a different weight inside of the decision making system especially when it is about decisions taken by political stakeholders.

During many years, the great companies who were doing industrial fishing had a powerful lobby and all the main decisions were taken accordingly with their interest. On the same time the issue about the amount of fish and the remaining stocks was really uncertain and this lack of knowledge could not prompt any transparency for decision making : if therre is no serious or accurate knowledge with the data, it is even harder to have the citizens informed about the issues and and the main decisions. The main problem is that cod in the Atlantic has been considered as an unllimited resource and thererfore it has been very difficult to make the politicians understand that they had to manage this resource and change their policy. There is a big struggle between the different stakeholders, between the environment protection agencies, the industrial lobby and the local fishers who are hugely affected by the ban on fishing cod since 1992 and who regulary ask for stoping the ban. Because of the invesments they had made previously, they fought against the restricted access of the resource. The fishers regulary ask that their opinion is taken into account into the decision process.