China's aquaculture and the world's wild fisheries Cao, Ling; Naylor, Rosamond; Henriksson, Patrik ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
01/2015, Volume:
347, Issue:
6218
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
China is the world's largest producer, consumer, processor, and exporter of finfish and shellfish (defined here as "fish"), and its fish imports are steadily rising (1-3). China produces more than ...one-third of the global fish supply, largely from its ever-expanding aquaculture sector, as most of its domestic fisheries are overexploited (3-6). Aquaculture accounts for similar to 72% of its reported domestic fish production, and China alone contributes >60% of global aquaculture volume and roughly half of global aquaculture value (1, 3).
•We assess the contribution of fish-related activities to food security and poverty reduction.•A scoping review on more than 200 articles grouped into relevant themes is completed.•The review reveals ...a heterogeneous “landscape” in terms of scientific quality and methodological rigor.•The contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to food security or economic development at global or macro-levels remains debated.•Evidence/science and policy narratives and action are often disconnected.
Following a precise evaluation protocol that was applied to a pool of 202 articles published between 2003 and 2014, this paper evaluates the existing evidence of how and to what extent capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute to improving nutrition, food security, and economic growth in developing and emergent countries. In doing so we evaluate the quality and scientific rigor of that evidence, identify the key conclusions that emerge from the literature, and assess whether these conclusions are consistent across the sources. The results of the assessment show that while some specific topics are consistently and rigorously documented, thus substantiating some of the claims found in the literature, other areas of research still lack the level of disaggregated data or an appropriate methodology to reach consistency and robust conclusions. More specifically, the analysis reveals that while fish contributes undeniably to nutrition and food security, the links between fisheries/aquaculture and poverty alleviation are complex and still unclear. In particular national and household level studies on fisheries’ contributions to poverty alleviation lack good conceptual models and produce inconsistent results. For aquaculture, national and household studies tend to focus on export value chains and use diverse approaches. They suggest some degree of poverty alleviation and possibly other positive outcomes for adopters, but these outcomes also depend on the small-scale farming contexts and on whether adoption was emergent or due to development assistance interventions. Impacts of fish trade on food security and poverty alleviation are ambiguous and confounded by a focus on international trade and a lack of consistent methods. The influences of major drivers (decentralization, climate change, demographic transition) are still insufficiently documented and therefore poorly understood. Finally the evaluation reveals that evidence-based research and policy narratives are often disconnected, with some of the strongest and long-lasting policy narratives lacking any strong and rigorous evidence-based validation. Building on these different results, this paper identifies six key gaps facing policy-makers, development practitioners, and researchers.
Aquaculture development is part of the Blue Economy narrative and it may offer opportunities for improving the well-being of coastal people and the wider population. However, unlocking its full ...potential is unlikely to occur through sole focus on increasing production. Using a framework for identifying the “people-policy gap” in aquaculture as a starting point, we introduce benefit sharing as a necessary and complementary concept to filling this gap, as well as the notion of policy coherence to achieve equitable aquaculture development. We examine these concepts in the context of mariculture development through an analysis of national mariculture policies and plans from a selection of Western Indian Ocean (WIO) countries. Our analysis shows that whilst important building blocks and a common thrust for equitable mariculture development exist at regional level, mechanisms through which the benefits from mariculture development are to reach stakeholders affected directly and indirectly by mariculture operations at national levels are not adequately considered. Lack of policy coherence at national level not only prevents progress towards closing the “people-policy gap” in mariculture development, but it may also jeopardise how the sector can live up to its expectations in the region. On the basis of these considerations, we extend our reflection to the aquaculture sector as a whole and argue that policy coherence and benefit sharing should become key considerations in the planning and future development of sustainable and equitable aquaculture.
Keystone species have a disproportionate influence on the structure and function of ecosystems. Here we analyze whether a keystone-like pattern can be observed in the relationship between ...transnational corporations and marine ecosystems globally. We show how thirteen corporations control 11-16% of the global marine catch (9-13 million tons) and 19-40% of the largest and most valuable stocks, including species that play important roles in their respective ecosystem. They dominate all segments of seafood production, operate through an extensive global network of subsidiaries and are profoundly involved in fisheries and aquaculture decision-making. Based on our findings, we define these companies as keystone actors of the Anthropocene. The phenomenon of keystone actors represents an increasingly important feature of the human-dominated world. Sustainable leadership by keystone actors could result in cascading effects throughout the entire seafood industry and enable a critical transition towards improved management of marine living resources and ecosystems.
By moving away from coastal waters and hence reducing pressure on nearshore ecosystems, offshore aquaculture can be seen as a possible step towards the large-scale expansion of the marine food ...production. Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) in nearshore water bodies has received increasing attention and could therefore play a role in the transfer of aquaculture operations to offshore areas. IMTA holds scope for multi-use of offshore areas and can bring environmental benefits from making use of waste products and transforming these into valuable co-products. Furthermore, they may act as alternative marine production systems and provide scope for alternative income options for coastal communities, e.g. by acting as nodes for farm operation and maintenance requirements. This paper summarizes the current state of knowledge on the implications of the exposed nature of the offshore and open ocean sites on the biological, technological and socio-economic performance of IMTA. Of particular interest is improving knowledge about resource flows between integrated species in hydrodynamic challenging conditions that characterise offshore waters.
Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector and continues to expand alongside terrestrial crop and livestock production. Using portfolio theory as a conceptual framework, we explore how current ...interconnections between the aquaculture, crop, livestock, and fisheries sectors act as an impediment to, or an opportunity for, enhanced resilience in the global food system given increased resource scarcity and climate change. Aquaculture can potentially enhance resilience through improved resource use efficiencies and increased diversification of farmed species, locales of production, and feeding strategies. However, aquaculture’s reliance on terrestrial crops and wild fish for feeds, its dependence on freshwater and land for culture sites, and its broad array of environmental impacts diminishes its ability to add resilience. Feeds for livestock and farmed fish that are fed rely largely on the same crops, although the fraction destined for aquaculture is presently small (∼4%). As demand for high-value fed aquaculture products grows, competition for these crops will also rise, as will the demand for wild fish as feed inputs. Many of these crops and forage fish are also consumed directly by humans and provide essential nutrition for low-income households. Their rising use in aquafeeds has the potential to increase price levels and volatility, worsening food insecurity among the most vulnerable populations. Although the diversification of global food production systems that includes aquaculture offers promise for enhanced resilience, such promise will not be realized if government policies fail to provide adequate incentives for resource efficiency, equity, and environmental protection.
Rapidly increasing international food trade has drastically altered the global food system over the past decades. Using national scale indicators, we assess two of the resilience principles that ...directly reflect the effects of global trade on food systems – namely, maintaining diversity and redundancy, and managing connectivity. We perform our analysis for four nutritional components: dietary energy, proteins, fat, and quantity of vegetables & fruits – the key pillars of the WHO dietary recommendations. Our results indicate that, between 1987 and 2013, food supply diversity increased significantly for most of the world's population at the cost of an elevated dependency upon food imports. Food production diversity, particularly in terms of dietary energy and vegetables & fruits, increased for a large proportion of the world population, with the exception being major exporting countries, where it decreased. Of particular note is our finding that, despite a growing number of people being heavily dependent upon imports, the number of import partners decreased more often than it increased, except for the case of vegetables & fruits. This combination of increased dependency on imports and a reduced number of import partners indicates a potential vulnerability to disruptions in linked food systems. Additionally, it is alarming that we found many countries where the studied resilience aspects systematically declined, elevating their exposure to future shocks in the food system.
•Impacts of international food trade on multiple indicators of food system resilience are assessed over last three decades.•Food supply diversity increased at the cost of increased dependency on food imports.•Production diversity decreased in major exporting countries.•Increased dependency on food imports combined with drop in trade partners might lead to vulnerability on food shocks.
Recent global crises reveal an emerging pattern of causation that could increasingly characterize the birth and progress of future global crises. A conceptual framework identifies this pattern’s deep ...causes, intermediate processes, and ultimate outcomes. The framework shows how multiple stresses can interact within a single social-ecological system to cause a shift in that system’s behavior, how simultaneous shifts of this kind in several largely discrete social-ecological systems can interact to cause a far larger intersystemic crisis, and how such a larger crisis can then rapidly propagate across multiple system boundaries to the global scale. Case studies of the 2008-2009 financial-energy and food-energy crises illustrate the framework. Suggestions are offered for future research to explore further the framework’s propositions.
Failure of the blue revolution is a global risk. The international problem is that there is a gap in knowledge exchange between the aquaculture industry, policy makers trying to support aquaculture ...development and people who depend on aquaculture for a job and/or food source. Thus, governments and international organizations promoting aquaculture as the solution to improving food security, nutrition and income are failing to optimise production of natural aquatic resources.
We identify a “people–policy gap”, and suggest that this is an understudied constraint, which needs to be overcome before worldwide food security can be achieved from aquatic environments. We argue that this gap leads to uneven distribution of benefits, a disconnection between benefits and local needs, and detrimental effects on human health and food security, all of which can have negative repercussions on human communities and ecosystems. In order to address this need, we present an analytical framework to guide context specific, policy-relevant assessments of the social, economic and ecological dimensions of aquaculture on a case-by-case basis. The framework is designed to make best use of existing data and scientific tools for decision-making.
In conclusion, we argue for: equal consideration of ecological, social and economic issues in aquaculture policy-making; pre-emptive identification of likely social impacts; integration of people- and context-specific social framing conditions into planning and policy review; addressing the social disconnection between global consumption and production; and, encouragement of creative combinations of theories and methods to assess and interpret the social dimensions of aquaculture in multiple contexts.
•Addresses the socio-economic impacts of aquaculture•Identifies why there is the gap in available knowledge and policies•Identifying the role of framing conditions for aquaculture development•Development of multi-dimensional assessment framework
Aquaculture has grown rapidly over the last three decades expanding at an average annual growth rate of 5.8% (2005-2014), down from 8.8% achieved between 1980 and 2010. The sector now produces 44% of ...total food fish production. Increasing demand and consumption from a growing global population are driving further expansion of both inland and marine aquaculture (i.e., mariculture, including marine species farmed on land). However, the growth of mariculture is dependent on the availability of suitable farming areas for new facilities, particularly for open farming practices that rely on the natural oceanic environmental parameters such as temperature, oxygen, chlorophyll etc. In this study, we estimated the marine areas within the exclusive economic zones of all countries that were suitable for potential open ocean mariculture activities. To this end, we quantify the environmental niche and inferred the global habitat suitability index (HSI) of the 102 most farmed marine species using four species distribution models. The average weighted HSI across the four models suggests that 72,000,000 km2 of ocean are to be environmentally suitable to farm one or more species. About 92% of the predicted area (66,000,000 km2) is environmentally suitable for farming finfish, 43% (31,000,000 km2) for molluscs and 54% (39,000,000 km2) for crustaceans. These predictions do not consider technological feasibility that can limit crustaceans farming in open waters. Suitable mariculture areas along the Atlantic coast of South America and West Africa appear to be most under-utilized for farming. Our results suggest that factors other than environmental considerations such as the lack of socio-economic and technological capacity, as well as aqua feed supply are currently limiting the potential for mariculture expansion in many areas.
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