By the 1990s, widespread fisheries restructuring triggered by the implementation of the individual transferable quota (ITQ) system and market-derived impacts of globalization had occurred in most aspects of the Icelandic fishery sector. The consequences of privatization of fishery resources have transformed management in regulating access to the resource, processing, corporate ideology, and the reproduction of labor. Economic rationality, marketability, efficiency, and managerial innovations in effect are both the mantra and imperative accompanying concentration and consolidation. Social and environmental costs are widely observable in many coastal communities that were the former lifeblood of the Icelandic economy. This chapter presents an accountof the policy implications of cutbacks in Atlantic cod Gadus morhua allocations and discusses their effect on coastal communities around Iceland. It will focus on the response of fishery companies to a changed structural environment, as well as their role in shaping the new sector with special emphasis on the economic rationale of leading seafood companies. In this context, this chapter explores the impact of the transformation in the fisheries sector on effects of the ITQ system on stocks; on fishing and fishers; on the processing sector; on labor, particularly that of women; and on communities.
展开▼
