Several key strategies must be implemented if there is any hope for sustainable fisheries in our rapidly warming oceans, says a new report from the Environmental Defense Fund. The report’s release coincides with COP25, a global climate conference being held this week in Madrid, Spain.
The report, Pathways for Climate-Ready Fisheries, details five areas of work that advocates, NGOs, fishermen, and government entities could prioritize to make ocean life more resilient to climate change. Those areas include strengthening fisheries management, supporting international cooperation and flexibility, enhancing biodiversity, and addressing inequities.
“Even with the necessary actions to control emissions and investments to reduce carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, changes in the ocean already underway will continue and even accelerate,” said Eric Schwaab, senior vice president for EDF Oceans, in a press release. “These changes are already fundamentally altering ocean ecosystems, with huge impacts on fishing communities and people worldwide who rely on fish for food, nutrition, and livelihoods. But with thoughtful interventions, many of these impacts can be significantly reduced, and in some cases even reversed.”
In September, a major report on climate change and the oceans from the United Nations concluded that global warming has had a severe impact on ocean ecosystems and ice sheets. Fish populations have declined steeply and rising sea levels threaten hundreds of millions of people who live on coastlines across the world. The depletion of ocean life has also contributed to the intensification of destructive storm systems.
EDF’s report says that in order to tackle these grave concerns as they relate to fisheries, those who work on the issue must find a new path forward that avoids repeating the mistakes of the past.
“Our perspective of what a prosperous fishing community should look like is often based on something we have seen or experienced in the past,” the report reads. “This will need to change so that we allow for visions of the future that may look different from what we have previously experienced. We need to reimagine what fisheries of the future can look like, based on an understanding of issues that may arise as climate change alters conditions, and make decisions that can balance conservation and utilization in this changing environment.”
The report is available here.