Climate Resilience and Fisheries - a large scale ban may be the only solution

We're seeing a growing number of analyses of the relevance and importance of climate resilience in specific industries.  An interesting paper appeared in Fish and Fisheries in August 2016, outlining the authors' conclusions about the need for a large scale ban on high seas fisheries to move from stock management that aims for sustainability to one that aims to achieve resilience.

 

Graham Wilson

 

Image © 2016 Dr Graham Wilson (This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.) 

 

Cheung, W. W. L., Jones, M. C., Lam, V. W. Y., D Miller, D., Ota, Y., Teh, L. and Sumaila, U. R. (2016), Transform high seas management to build climate resilience in marine seafood supply. Fish Fish. doi:10.1111/faf.12177

 

 

Climate change is projected to redistribute fisheries resources, resulting in tropical regions suffering decreases in seafood production. While sustainably managing marine ecosystems contributes to building climate resilience, these solutions require transformation of ocean governance. Recent studies and international initiatives suggest that conserving high seas biodiversity and fish stocks will have ecological and economic benefits; however, implications for seafood security under climate change have not been examined. Here, we apply global-scale mechanistic species distribution models to 30 major straddling fish stocks to show that transforming high seas fisheries governance could increase resilience to climate change impacts. By closing the high seas to fishing or cooperatively managing its fisheries, we project that catches in exclusive economic zones (EEZs) would likely increase by around 10% by 2050 relative to 2000 under climate change (representative concentration pathway 4.5 and 8.5), compensating for the expected losses (around −6%) from ‘business-as-usual’. Specifically, high seas closure increases the resilience of fish stocks, as indicated by a mean species abundance index, by 30% in EEZs. We suggest that improving high seas fisheries governance would increase the resilience of coastal countries to climate change.

 

 

Established in 2010, GCAP (http://climateadaptation.cc) ranks among the top 10 leading climate think tanks globally, providing knowledge services related to national adaptation investment and finance, climate economics, climate adaptation strategy and planning and climate risk screening.  A world class organisation, we support managers holding over $1 billion in funds.  Our flagship, Oxford Adaptation Academy (http://www.climateadaptation.cc/our-work/adaptation-academy), is a unique incubator for leadership and innovation within the field of climate adaptation.

 

Dr Graham Wilson leads the personal development and leadership strand of the Adaptation Academy.  With a background in ethology and behavioural science, he is an Executive, Leadership and Political Confidant, Tutor in Psychology and Counselling with the University of Oxford, and Co-Director of the Oxford Adaptation Academy.  His research interests include coaching and visual anthropology.  [LinkedIn = http://tinyurl.com/drgwli]