TM17 | Managing in a shifting world: how to incorporate climate change projections in fisheries management

TM17

Managing in a shifting world: how to incorporate climate change projections in fisheries management

Convener: Manuel Barange | Co-convener: William Cheung, François Houllier

Tue, 03 Jun, 12:45–13:45 (CEST)|Room 3

Climate change is already producing significant impacts on marine ecosystems and their fisheries. Distributional, productivity, body size, and seasonality changes are already presenting challenges for stock assessment and management processes, with implications for the effectiveness of management decisions. Given that a significant proportion of marine fish stocks are already overexploited (FAO 2024), climate-driven impacts put at risk the long-term sustainability of fisheries resources, their supporting ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.

There is broad agreement that adaptations to the consequences of climate change in fisheries management are urgently needed, but examples of climate-adaptive fisheries management are rare. The reasons for this are diverse, including that: stock assessment models rely on principles of stationarity and fixed population model parameters; climate change projections have a mismatch of scales with stock assessment and management decisions; fisheries advisers may find a challenge to include future scenarios that are subject to large uncertainties, while managers would have to consider the legal implications of decisions that could be contested; and shifting distributions of transboundary species that require new data collection, monitoring, assessments and international cooperation and coordination.

This town hall will explore how to incorporate climate change projections in fisheries management by discussing three overarching questions: What are the expected impacts that we need to consider? How can stock assessments incorporate these impacts and their associated uncertainties, which may be significant? And what flexibility can be introduced into the fisheries management cycle in order to foster adaptation and strengthen fisheries resilience?

The ultimate objective of this town hall is to broaden a community of action on climate-adaptive fisheries management, to foster discussions on how current and emerging scientific research can address key questions, and gather best practice principles, opportunities, and guiding examples. This discussion will contribute to objectives of sustainability, equitability, and safety of ocean-based food systems as well as effectiveness, equitability, and safety of ocean-based approaches to climate change adaptation, thereby contributing to broader goals of the conference. The target audience for this townhall will be intentionally cross-cutting, bridging disciplines and stakeholder groups, including experts (e.g. climate-change, fisheries), practitioners and managers (e.g. fisheries bodies), and policymakers.

The event is being co-organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the FishMIP consortium, with assistance from the Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER).