Rome, Mar 05th, 2009 (WAM): Fishing-reliant communities in the developing world are extremely vulnerable to climate change, warned Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.
Releasing the latest edition of the UN agency's The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA), FAO also said that fishing industry and national fisheries authorities must do more to understand and prepare for the impacts that climate change will have on world fisheries. According to the report existing responsible fishing practices need to be more widely implemented and current management plans should be expanded to include strategies for coping with climate change. 'Best practices that are already on the books but not always implemented offer clear, established tools towards making fisheries more resilient to climate change,' said Kevern Cochrane, one of SOFIA's authors. 'So the message to fishers and fisheries authorities is clear: get in line with current best practices, like those contained in FAO's Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and you've already taken important strides towards mitigating the effects of climate change'. Climate change is already modifying the distribution of both marine and freshwater species. Warmer-water species are being pushed towards the poles and experiencing changes in habitat size and productivity. And climate change is affecting the seasonality of biological processes, altering marine and freshwater food webs, with unpredictable consequences for fish production. For communities who heavily rely on fisheries, any decreases in the local availability of fish or increases in the instability in their livelihoods will pose serious problems, said the report. 'Many fisheries are being exploited at the top range of their productive capacity. When you look at the impacts that climate change might have on ocean ecosystems, that raise concerns as to how they'll hold up,' said Cochrane. Urgent efforts are needed to help fishery and aquaculture dependent communities to strengthen their resilience to climate change, especially those most vulnerable, he added. Total world fisheries production reached a new high of 143.6 million tonnes in 2006 (92 million tonnes capture fisheries, 51.7 million tonnes aquaculture). Of that, 110.4 million tonnes was used for human consumption, with the remainder going to non-food uses (livestock feed, fishmeal for aquaculture). The production increases came from the aquaculture sector, which now accounts for 47 percent of all fish consumed by humans as food. Production in capture fisheries has levelled off and is not likely to increase beyond current levels. Nineteen percent of the major commercial marine fish stocks monitored by FAO are overexploited, 8 percent are depleted, and 1 percent is ranked as recovering from depletion, the report indicates. Twenty percent of stocks fall into the moderately exploited or underexploited category. Areas with the highest proportions of fully-exploited stocks are the Northeast Atlantic, the Western Indian Ocean and the Northwest Pacific, noted the report. SOFIA identifies overcapacity a combination of too many boats and highly effective fishing technologies as a key problem affecting fisheries today. SOFIA painted a clear picture of the importance of fishing and aquaculture in the developing world. An estimated 43.5 million people are directly involved, either full or part time, in capture fisheries and aquaculture. Most (86pc) live in Asia. An additional 4 million are engaged in the sector on an occasional basis. Factoring in employment in fish processing, marketing and service industries and including the families of all people employed directly or indirectly from fisheries and aquaculture, over half a billion people depend on the sector. Fish provides more than 2.9 billion people with at least 15 percent of their average per capita animal protein intake. It contributes at least 50 percent of total animal protein intake in many small island developing states as well as in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, French Guiana, the Gambia, Ghana, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. SOFIA also includes chapters on the occupational safety of fishers, seafood certification schemes, marine genetic resources, shrimp fishing, and the use of wild fish as seed and feed in aquaculture.Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2009.
