My Fish Paper

The Central Arctic Ocean Fishing Agreement: A Challenge for U.S. Diplomacy, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3606, April 16, 2021. "The Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Commercial Fishing on the High Seas of the Central Arctic Ocean, signed by the U.S. in October 2018 and ratified in August 2019, seeks to apply precautionary conservation and management measures to ensure the sustainable use of fish stocks in Arctic waters outside the jurisdictions of the signatory nations. The agreement has a laudable goal and is largely sensible, but it suffers from defects of both substance and process: It is vulnerable to free-riding and, by the rules of the State Department, should have been a treaty. The agreement is acceptable only as an interim measure. The U.S. should seek to replace it with a multilateral treaty that binds all major fishing nations."