By Vicky Lam
(Research Associate & Program Manager, Nippon Foundation-UBC Nereus Program)
In late August, Professors Daniel Pauly, Rashid Sumaila and Dr. Vicky Lam, as representatives of the Global Fisheries Cluster in UBC’s Institute for Oceans and Fisheries (IOF), were invited by the World Bank to attend a technical consultation meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, to discuss a potential project that aims to understand the likely impacts of climate change through fisheries in African countries. The meeting was attended by variety of participants including representatives of the World Bank, staff from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), fisheries specialists from different regions of Africa, and several fisheries experts from other regions of the world. The objectives of this technical consultation meeting were to engage in a discussion of potential key partners, gather existing knowledge on the biological and socio-economic impacts on African fisheries, identify knowledge gaps, and gather recommendations and advice for this potential project.
Daniel Pauly presents at World Bank technical consultation meeting (Photo: ©Vicky Lam)
On the first day of the meeting, Daniel, Rashid and I shared our research and experiences during the session on “Existing work on climate change & marine fisheries relevant for Sub-Saharan Africa”. We presented our previous and current research work related to the impacts of climate change on the biological, ecological, economic and social aspects of fisheries. Daniel talked about ocean warming and its effect on fish and fisheries, with emphasis on West and Northwest Africa. In his talk, he presented the current reconstructed catch status for West African fisheries (Pauly and Zeller, 2016), poleward migration of fishes (Pauly, 1994, Cheung et al., 2009) and the impacts on fisheries under climate change (Cheung et al., 2010, Cheung et al., 2013b). He also highlighted his recent study that proposed that limits to the growth capacity of gills is a limiting factor to the growth of fish body size, which results in the shrinkage in fish size when the ocean gets warmer (Pauly and Kinne, 2010, Cheung et al., 2013a, Pauly and Cheung, 2017).
I followed with a presentation on the projected socio-economic impacts of climate change on fisheries revenues, number of fisheries-related jobs, fish supply and protein supply in West African countries through fisheries. My talk was based on my previous studies in this region (Lam et al., 2012, Lam et al., 2016). I also presented a vulnerability assessment study for the West African countries based on the framework reported in Allison et al. (2009). At the end of the presentation, I summarized the major challenges to fisheries under climate change in this region and offered recommendations to mitigate and adapt to these changes.
Rashid Sumaila presents at World Bank technical consultation meeting (Photo: ©Vicky Lam)
Rashid took the stage in the final part of this session. In his talk, he pointed out the impact of climate change on food security and human well-being, and the measures for coping with and adapting to these changes, including the idea of putting in place a climate endowment fund (Sumaila and Cheung, 2010, Sumaila et al., 2011, Sumaila et al., 2014). The climate endowment fund would ask the question: What is the capital that a country, region or the world will need to have in order to replace the loss in gross revenues that is likely to be incurred as a result of climate change? It would then call on individuals, businesses and governments to seed such a fund in preparation for what is to come (Sumaila & Cheung (2010). Lastly, Sumaila provided a sketch of currently ongoing work by members of the OceanCanada Partnership and the Global Fisheries Cluster that can contribute to this World Bank project.
The Global Fisheries Cluster’s presentations generated much positive feedback from the group of participants. They showed great interest in the approaches to understanding the climate change impacts on oceans and fisheries. They also had questions on the details of the modeling approach, particularly on incorporating management measures in the model, assessing the uncertainty of different parts of the models, including gender disaggregation in the social impact analysis, and the inclusion of ocean acidification in the models. The work of the “UBC group” provided a great starting point and preliminary framework for the further discussion of the approaches that maybe adopted by the proposed World Bank report.
On the last day of the meeting, I led a discussion on how to choose the appropriate vulnerability assessment framework for the proposed World Bank study. Daniel also gave a brief talk on extreme weather conditions and climate change. This talk was very informative and raised much interest in the relationship between extreme weather and climate change among the participants.
I found the meeting to be productive and I am positive that it would contribute to the future works on understanding climate change impacts on oceans and fisheries and how to adopt to these impacts in Africa.
References
ALLISON, E. H., PERRY, A. L., BADJECK, M. C., NEIL ADGER, W., BROWN, K., CONWAY, D., HALLS, A. S., PILLING, G. M., REYNOLDS, J. D. & ANDREW, N. L. 2009. Vulnerability of national economies to the impacts of climate change on fisheries. Fish Fish, 10, 173-196.
CHEUNG, W. W., LAM, V. W., SARMIENTO, J. L., KEARNEY, K., WATSON, R. & PAULY, D. 2009. Projecting global marine biodiversity impacts under climate change scenarios. Fish Fish, 10, 235-251.
CHEUNG, W. W., LAM, V. W., SARMIENTO, J. L., KEARNEY, K., WATSON, R., ZELLER, D. & PAULY, D. 2010. Large‐scale redistribution of maximum fisheries catch potential in the global ocean under climate change. Global Change Biol, 16, 24-35.
CHEUNG, W. W., SARMIENTO, J. L., DUNNE, J., FRÖLICHER, T. L., LAM, V. W., PALOMARES, M. D., WATSON, R. & PAULY, D. 2013a. Shrinking of fishes exacerbates impacts of global ocean changes on marine ecosystems. Nat. Clim. Change, 3, 254-258.
CHEUNG, W. W., WATSON, R. & PAULY, D. 2013b. Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch. Nature, 497, 365-368.
LAM, V. W. Y., CHEUNG, W. W. L., REYGONDEAU, G. & SUMAILA, U. R. 2016. Projected change in global fisheries revenues under climate change. Scientific Reports, 6, 32607.
LAM, V. W. Y., CHEUNG, W. W. L., SWARTZ, W. & SUMAILA, U. R. 2012. Climate Change Impacts on Fisheries in West Africa: Implications for Economic, Food and Nutritional Security. African Journal of Marine Science, 34, 103-117.
PAULY, D. 1994. Un mécanisme explicatif des migrations des poissons le long des côtes du Nord-Ouest africain.
PAULY, D. & CHEUNG, W. W. 2017. Sound physiological knowledge and principles in modeling shrinking of fishes under climate change. Global Change Biology.
PAULY, D. & KINNE, O. 2010. Gasping fish and panting squids: oxygen, temperature and the growth of water-breathing animals, International Ecology Institute Oldendorf/Luhe, Germany.
PAULY, D. & ZELLER, D. 2016. Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining. Nature communications, 7.
SUMAILA, U. R. & CHEUNG, W. W. 2010. Cost of adapting fisheries to climate change. World Bank Discussion Paper, 5.
SUMAILA, U. R., CHEUNG, W. W. & LAM, V. W. 2014. Climate change effects on the economics and management of marine fisheries. Handbook on the Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity, 61.
SUMAILA, U. R., CHEUNG, W. W., LAM, V. W., PAULY, D. & HERRICK, S. 2011. Climate change impacts on the biophysics and economics of world fisheries. Nature climate change, 1, 449.
Tags: Climate change, Daniel Pauly, Faculty, fisheries management, IOF Research Associates, Nereus Program, Rashid Sumaila, Vicky Lam