Synergies and Trade-offs Between Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals in the Context of Marine Fisheries

Abstract

By 2050, humans will face the challenge of having to provide food and livelihoods to a population likely to exceed nine billion people. This challenge is well reflected in the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, a global commitment to end poverty and hunger and to ensure that economic, social and technological progress occur in harmony with nature, through the sustainable management of natural resources. The goals of this agenda cover a wide array of critical areas in human development and socio-economic issues faced by humanity today, with many being interrelated. In particular, the goals of “Poverty Reduction,” “Zero Hunger,” “Decent Work and Economic Growth,” Climate Action and “Life below Water” (Goals 1, 2, 8, 13 and 14) are especially impactful and relevant to the marine fishery industry and allied fields as well.

Globally, the fisheries and aquaculture sector supports the livelihoods of between 10 and 12% of the world’s population, and in the last five decades, production has significantly outpaced population growth (FAO 2016), thus increasing its overall contribution to food security and nutrition (HLPE 2014). In India, a country which is home to 10% of the world’s total biodiversity of fish and the world’s second largest producer of fish, over 1.5 crore people directly depend on it for survival and it nets more than 5% of its GDP and over 10% of its foreign exchange earnings by exporting fish and marine products; yet fishermen and fisheries get little attention from either policy makers or the political class.

An additional consideration to the challenge of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals is that they will have to be met at a time when the effects of climate change will be increasingly prominent. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) explicitly recognizes the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger when pursuing climate action. The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC concludes, with high confidence, that global marine species redistribution and marine biodiversity reduction in sensitive regions will challenge the sustained provision of fisheries productivity by the mid-twenty-first century (IPCC. Climate change 2014. Synthesis report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, 151 pp, 2014) and preparedness is essential to translate changes into opportunities. Furthermore, the IPCC notes that adaptation is place- and context-specific, with no single approach for reducing risks that will apply across all settings (IPCC. Climate change 2014. Synthesis report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, 151 pp, 2014).

This chapter will attempt to make a summary of the fishery industries of various key economic regions in terms of the efforts undertaken to fulfil the sustainable development goals in these areas, as well as focus on the synergies and trade-offs between the different sustainable goals, and examine the political and economic issues that pose challenges to the attainment of these goals.