Overexploitation

Overexploitation refers to the harvesting or extraction of renewable natural resources at a rate that exceeds their capacity to regenerate, leading to declines in abundance, genetic diversity, and ecosystem function. While some resource stocks can recover after declines, sustained overexploitation risks regime shifts, loss of ecosystem services, and long-term economic and social costs. It is commonly framed as a problem of open-access or poorly governed common-pool resources, where individual incentives do not align with collective sustainability.

The term is most often used in fisheries, forestry, wildlife management, and freshwater resources. Drivers include persistent market demand and prices, technological advances that increase catch efficiency, subsidies that encourage harvesting, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, weak governance, insecure property rights, and inadequate monitoring and enforcement. Climate change and habitat degradation can amplify vulnerabilities.

Impacts are broad: biologically, stock depletion, reduced biodiversity, altered trophic interactions, and genetic loss; economically, lower catches, price volatility, and impacts on livelihoods; socially, food insecurity and conflicts over resources; and ecologically, diminished ecosystem resilience and function.

Management approaches emphasize precaution and adaptive strategies: science-based quotas or catch limits, rights-based management, licensing and gear restrictions, seasonal closures, protected areas, community-based management, improved monitoring and enforcement, and international cooperation. Demand-side tools include trade restrictions and certification schemes to incentivize sustainable practices.

A classic case is the collapse of Atlantic cod stocks off Newfoundland in the early 1990s after decades of overfishing. Other cases include widespread deforestation due to unsustainable logging and declines in large mammal populations from hunting and habitat loss. Addressing overexploitation requires integrated governance, robust data, and incentives aligned with long-term resource viability.