Wednesday June 28, 2023
Global Seafood Alliance —
Many of the world’s largest aquatic food producers are highly vulnerable to human-induced climate change, with some of the highest-risk countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa demonstrating the lowest capacity for adaptation, a landmark study has shown.
The study, which was published in Nature Sustainability, shows that more than 90 percent of global blue food production, in both capture fisheries and aquaculture, faces substantial risks from environmental change, with several leading countries in Asia and the United States set to face the greatest threats to production.
It’s the first-ever global analysis of environmental stressors impacting the production quantity and safety of blue foods around the world, ranking countries for the first time according to their exposure to key stressors.
“Environmental stressors do not care about national borders,” said Ben Halpern, co-lead author and professor at UC Santa Barbara and director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. “Stressors get moved by air, water, species and humans, connecting land to sea and ecosystem to ecosystem.”