Key highlights from the OECD Review of Fisheries 2025 on fisheries and aquaculture production and management in the OECD and beyond

Fisheries and aquaculture provide food for billions of people playing a key role in global food security. However, fish stocks and marine ecosystems are under stress from climate change, illegal fishing, overfishing and pollution. Sustainably managing fish stocks and ensuring government support to fisheries don’t compromise the health of resources is fundamental to the social, economic, and environmental performance of global fisheries and its resilience, notably climate change.

The upcoming edition of the OECD Review of Fisheries (to be launched early 2025), monitors the sector’s performance and sustainability and explores how smarter public policies can reinforce fisheries’ role in global food security and the ocean economy. It covers 41 countries, which together accounted for 87% of global aquaculture and 69% of global fishing production over 2020-22.

Key elements from the report that could contribute to session T7-1 include:

• Recent trends in production, trade, employment and fleet and the outlook for the next decade
• Facts on the status of fish stocks, based on the collection of individual stock assessment data, since 2019, and the computation of country-level stock health and productivity indicators.
• The policy landscape for capture fisheries at the country-level:
  • A review of the management tools governments use to regulate their most valuable fisheries
  • A review of the policies governments use to support their capture fisheries sector
  • A discussion of how better management and support policies could help ensure the sustainability of the resource base while maximising benefits for societies, and minimising environmental detrimental impact.
• Climate change presents major challenges for global capture fisheries, and its impacts will need to be factored in sustainable fisheries management both at domestic and multilateral levels and will create adaptation challenges that fisheries support policies may also need to address.

 

Some key messages from the report:

• Fish production volume is growing and is anticipated to continue growing through aquaculture production, with a continued concentration of production in Asia.
• The structure of the sector is evolving, with less jobs in capture fisheries in many countries, and an increasing share of total value generated by aquaculture.
• Data suggests that fisheries management works: among assessed fish stocks, the share of healthy stocks was higher than the share of healthy stocks as estimated by the FAO for all stocks. Variation at the country level is significant, both in terms of stock health and the extent of knowledge thereof.
• More could be done to harvest healthy stocks optimally: a large number of healthy stocks do not meet productivity targets aimed at maximising the catch or value of landings, highlighting the potential of improved fisheries management to optimise food production or fisher incomes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Significant proportion of policies aimed at supporting capture fisheries presents a risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing in absence of effective management. There is scope to re-allocate government spending to more effectively.