Cost of adapting fisheries to climate change

This study has two objectives. The first is to help decision makers, especially in developing countries, to better understand and assess the risks posed by climate change, and to better design strategies to adapt their fishing sectors to climate change. The second objective is to develop global estimates of adaptation costs in the fisheries sector of countries to inform the international community's efforts, including United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Bali action plan, to provide access to adequate, predictable, and sustainable support, and to provide new and additional resources to help the most vulnerable developing countries meet adaptation costs. Adaptation is here understood to mean any action taken to reduce the risk posed by the impact of climate change in a given sector of the economy, for example, fisheries. Adaptation cost is then the cost of taking such action. This report focuses on marine capture fisheries, not inland or aquaculture, for a number of reasons. In the first place, the study of the impact of climate change on fisheries is more advanced in the case of capture fisheries, so the authors have the necessary basic scientific information on which to base their analysis. Second, marine capture fisheries are still over 50 percent of the total value of global fisheries (capture, inland, and aquaculture) and support a large number of economically vulnerable people in coastal communities of the world, especially in developing countries. Third, there are indications that both inland fisheries and aquaculture are likely to suffer similar challenges identified for marine capture fisheries. Hence, the results from this study can provide insights about the potential cost of adapting inland fisheries and aquaculture to climate change.