On the influence of environmental factors on harvest: the French Guiana shrimp fishery paradox

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the environmental nature of the French Guiana shrimp fishery dynamics through an empirical analysis. To do so, we specify a global harvest production function, in which the output depends on the number of days at sea and the stock level. In addition, we use some environmental variables representing the ‘El Niño’ and ‘la Niña’ phenomena, the sea surface temperature, and the flow of some Amazonian rivers as instruments. This method enables us to correct the well-known simultaneous bias between the harvest and the stock levels and to show that harvest is significantly dependent on the environmental factors analyzed, which may compromise the future of the French Guiana shrimp fishery in the context of climate change.