# Working (control policy — free verb order; discarded before grading)

**Problem.** Coastal demersal fishery; CPUE and mean size declining 3 yrs; harvest ~20% over MSY; recruitment-collapse threshold in 4–7 yrs; ~120 small-boat operators across 5 villages, open-access in practice, processors downstream; regulator has TAC authority but historically defers to industry. Must restore biomass to MSY range within 10 yrs AND keep aggregate income drop <20%, with no regime that pushes the bottom quartile below subsistence.

**meta_model.** Many independent rational actors draw from a shared, rivalrous, non-excludable renewable pool; each captures full private benefit of one more unit but bears only 1/N of the depletion cost, so aggregate take overshoots the renewal rate and the pool approaches an irreversible collapse threshold. The body that could impose restraint has authority but is captured-by-deference. A necessary cut must be distributed without pushing the weakest below a survival floor.

**Verbs run (in order, with one-line why):**
1. **match (search_by_facets)** — oblique multi-structure problem (commons + threshold + capture + distribution); decompose into facets. → core = tragedy_of_the_commons / social_dilemma; archetype = commons_governance; capture + threshold facets surface regulatory_capture and tipping_point_prevention.
2. **match (search_prime)** — confirm the over-extraction core with a clean meta-model query. → tragedy_of_the_commons (distinctive), social_dilemma, free_riding, externality, risk_pooling.
3. **lift / transport (get_archetype: commons_governance)** — pull the operative pattern's full logic (action steps, components, failure modes, invariants). → bound commons, rights+duties, monitoring, graduated sanctions, replenishment, legitimacy, adaptation; failure modes name capture-by-powerful-users and maintenance/burden dumped on an unprotected subgroup.
4. **lift (get_prime: tragedy_of_the_commons)** — extract the Ostrom design principles + concrete mechanisms (ITQ/catch-share, MPAs, community governance) and the caveat that pure privatization consolidates.
5. **transport (get_archetype: tipping_point_prevention)** — the 4–7 yr threshold needs pre-crossing intervention: act before proof is conclusive, precommit trigger rules, preserve the window, condition action on early-warning signals.
6. **evaluate-fit / reconcile (get_prime: regulatory_capture)** — gate the design against the captured-regulator reality; a rule-only fix fails under capture, so independence/redundancy/transparency must be built in, not assumed.
7. **salience-rank + prune** — operative subset: commons_governance (frame) carrying tragedy_of_the_commons (core) + tipping_point_prevention (timing) + regulatory_capture (anti-failure) + an equity/floor guard. Dropped: risk_pooling, bystander/solidarity (weak fit).
8. **lower / compose** — instantiate to the fishery: TAC trajectory, floored catch shares, monitoring, transition fund, co-governance council, condition-indexed operating rule.

**operative_primes:** tragedy_of_the_commons; (commons_governance archetype); tipping_point_prevention; regulatory_capture; + distributional floor.
**gate_log:** rejected pure-ITQ allocation (trips commons_governance "illegitimate exclusion" + tragedy_of_the_commons "privatization consolidates" → would sink bottom quartile, fails the floor criterion); rejected rule-only TAC (trips regulatory_capture — captured regulator enforces selectively); rejected blunt moratorium (fails the <20% income criterion and subsistence floor).

COST: ~6 operations, ~28k tokens

===RECOMMENDATION_BEGIN===

Treat the stock as a shared asset that collapses when everyone's individually reasonable catch sums past what the population can replace, and design an arrangement the fishing communities help build and police themselves — because a cap imposed from above by a body that has always deferred to the fleet will be enforced loosely and gamed, while a cap the villages co-author and benefit from is one they will defend.

Start by fixing the total catch to the biology, not to last year's landings. Set a total allowable catch each season pegged to the current stock assessment, beginning roughly 25–30% below present harvest so that take falls below the replacement rate immediately, and hold it there until biomass indicators recover. This is deeper than the 20% overshoot on purpose: recovery needs the stock to grow, not merely stop shrinking, and the extra margin buys distance from the collapse threshold while the window is still open. As biomass, catch-per-unit-effort, and average fish size climb back, raise the cap on a published schedule so fishers see restraint converting into larger future quotas — restraint must visibly pay the person who exercises it, or no one will.

Divide the cap into shares, but floor it. Give every active operator a guaranteed baseline allocation sized to keep a typical small boat above subsistence, and distribute only the remainder in proportion to recent participation. Make shares leasable but cap how much any operator or buyer may hold, and forbid trades that would drop a boat below its baseline. A pure tradable-quota market would let larger operators and processors buy out the smallest boats and quietly destroy the bottom quartile while aggregate numbers still look fine; the floor plus the holding cap is what prevents that. Aggregate income is protected because the total catch, though lower, is harvested from a recovering, higher-value stock of larger fish, and because effort costs fall once the race to fish before the others ends.

Cushion the transition with a dedicated fund. Finance it from a modest levy on the downstream processors and buyers (who depend on the stock continuing to exist) and any external recovery support, and use it to pay seasonal-closure stipends, buy back or convert excess gear, and support alternative income during the steepest part of the cut. The point is to absorb the short-term income dip so the floor holds and the <20% aggregate target is met across the cohort, not to subsidize overcapacity indefinitely; taper it as quotas rise.

Make the stock and the catch visible, and attach proportionate consequences. Require simple landing reporting at the processor point (the natural chokepoint — buyers already weigh fish), publish stock indicators and each village's catch against its cap, and use graduated penalties: a warning and small deduction for a first minor overage, escalating to share suspension for repeat or large violations. Proportionate, predictable, locally-witnessed enforcement sustains compliance far better than rare harsh crackdowns.

Guard against the regulator simply deferring again by not leaving the decision to the regulator alone. Stand up a co-management council with seats for the five villages, the processors, the regulator, and — critically — an independent stock scientist whose assessment sets the cap by a transparent rule rather than by negotiation. Publish the assessment, the cap formula, and council decisions. Independence of the science seat and transparency of the numbers are what stop the fleet from talking the cap back up year after year, which is exactly how this fishery arrived at overshoot.

Build in pre-collapse triggers. Because the dangerous transition may arrive before everyone agrees it is real, precommit to automatic precautionary cuts: if recruitment indicators, mean size, or CPUE fall below set warning bands in any season, the cap drops by a fixed step the following season without re-litigation, and reverses only when indicators recover. This preserves the intervention window instead of waiting for proof that arrives too late to act on.

Review and adjust the whole arrangement on a fixed cadence — annually for the cap, every few years for the rules — so the design tracks the stock rather than ossifying.

Final operating rule: each season, set the total catch from the independent assessment so the stock keeps growing toward its productive range; split that catch as a protected baseline for every boat plus a participation-weighted, transfer-limited remainder; cushion the cut from a buyer-funded transition fund; monitor at the dock with graduated sanctions; and if early-warning indicators worsen, cut the cap automatically and restore it only as the stock recovers — keeping every boat above subsistence while the population climbs back.

===RECOMMENDATION_END===
