By Bavidra Mohan, Director of Acumen Academy, and Jeff Young, Senior Manager, Global Capacity Development, Environmental Defense Fund
The small-scale fisheries sector is a powerful example of our interconnectedness. Small-scale fisheries employ 90% of all fishworkers globally, supplying nearly half of the world’s fish catch each year. In addition to feeding coastal communities, seafood harvested by small-scale fishers ends up on the plates of consumers from Bogotá to Beijing. Read More
By Eric Schwaab, Rod Fujita and Jacqui Vogel
Climate change is already transforming the distribution and abundance of fish stocks around the world. Warming temperatures, lower pH levels and many other factors are causing many fish species to shift to better habitats and others to shrink in abundance. This is problematic for the communities that rely on these stocks, especially when the shifts cross jurisdictional boundaries, such as those between fishery management zones or national exclusive economic zones, known as EEZs.
Climate-induced stock shifts are causing more overfishing, illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, discarding, higher fuel use, injustice and even armed conflict. Unless fishery management and fisheries become more adaptive and resilient to climate change, these problems will only worsen, but it’s not too late for solutions like flexible allocation systems, dynamic spatial management, ocean observing systems and international collaboration. Read More
By: Kristin M. Kleisner and Jamie Collins
As we embark this year on the United Nations Ocean Decade, you may be hearing quite a bit about blue carbon. But what is it, and why is it so important for the future of our planet? Well, the oceans play a critical role in trapping carbon, and they have absorbed about a third of all human-generated carbon emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution. This is important because the carbon that human activity has released into the atmosphere acts as an accelerator of climate change.
When carbon is stored naturally in the various parts of ocean and coastal ecosystems — sequestering it, or taking it out of the atmosphere, where it could contribute to warming — we call it blue carbon. The blue carbon storage reservoir includes waters, sediments, and marine plants and animals. Unfortunately, loss of habitat, overfishing and other human impacts, including those from climate change, are reducing the ability of the oceans to trap carbon. That’s why we are exploring pathways to restore these benefits now and help to secure a better future for us all. You can learn more about blue carbon and some of the ways in which we may be able to restore key pathways using this interactive site. Read More
Worldwide, there is considerable interest in developing fishery management options that balance social, economic and ecological goals for multispecies fisheries. Ideally, fisheries management should strive not only to produce good yields from single stocks, but also to avoid serial depletion and prevent adverse impacts of fishing on marine ecosystems — a difficult, but achievable task. Read More
By Katie Westfall and Kristin Kleisner
Tunas, sharks, billfishes and swordfish are wide-ranging species that can respond rapidly to environmental changes. Many within this group are top predators and can move across ocean basins and between shallow and deep waters in response to oceanic conditions. For these reasons, some of these species may serve as “climate sentinels,” or animals that can offer important insights into how a changing climate is affecting ocean processes and marine life. Read More
In recent years, investment circles have been abuzz with a bright new shiny object — the “Blue Economy.” Pick an impact investor, development bank or conservation fund out of a hat, and chances are there is a mention of the Blue Economy somewhere on their website. (Although technically, the Blue Economy has existed ever since humans began engaging in maritime commerce, but that’s another story.) Read More
