Voting Systems Influence Conservation Outcomes for International Fisheries

ABSTRACT Fishery stocks that range partly or entirely beyond national jurisdictions pose substantial coordination challenges. Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs) were created to coordinate the sustainable management of these resources. Although RFMOs aim to make decisions by consensus, formal votes can be held when that proves impossible. Each organization sets a threshold for a vote to pass, and these range from simple majority to supermajority or unanimity. Here, we use a multiplayer bioeconomic model to examine how different voting thresholds could affect conservation outcomes in these types of multilateral governance organizations. We show that higher thresholds—particularly consensus—result in worse conservation outcomes for fisheries with a history of open access and high exploitation. By contrast, lower voting thresholds, such as simple majority, result in worse conservation outcomes for emerging fisheries with a history of low exploitation. Our results show that the choice of voting thresholds has the potential to affect conservation outcomes, but is moderated by the initial exploitation state of the stock. These results raise questions about the UN's recommendation that all RFMOs aim for consensus‐based decision‐making.