Negotiating procedures for the allocation of shared fishery resources
by multiple users have not been formalized, and often place emphasis o
n historical shares of the harvest, This may not always be compatible
with the duty of care for the resource and its environment expressed i
n Agenda 21 of UNCED. It is suggested here how ancillary consideration
s, with the consensus of all interested parties, might be included in
a resource allocation negotiation, following a procedure which could h
ave broader applications elsewhere, A distinction is made in the negot
iating process between the proposal of technical factors by interested
parties, their quantification for each party, best accomplished by an
impartial review panel, and the relative weightings finally given to
each technical factor, decided by negotiation, Negotiations could effi
ciently focus on these weightings within a spreadsheet matrix of numer
ical values by interested party and factor. From a hypothetical exampl
e, it seems that prior negotiation on which factors to include may be
unnecessary with multiple participants: any factor not achieving gener
al consensus will have a low weighting, and a relatively minor influen
ce on the final allocations. (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd