Adaptive Fisheries Management in Response to Climate Change
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FAO ISSN 2070-7010 FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE TECHNICAL PAPER 667 Adaptive management of fisheries in response to climate change Cover illustration: Pietro Bartoleschi FAO FISHERIES AND Adaptive management AQUACULTURE TECHNICAL of fisheries in response PAPER to climate change 667 Edited by Tarûb Bahri Fishery resources officer FAO Fisheries Division Rome, Italy Marcelo Vasconcellos Fishery resources officer FAO Fisheries Division Rome, Italy David Welch Senior scientist C2O Fisheries Cairns, Australia Johanna Johnson Senior scientist C2O coasts, climate, oceans Cairns, Australia R. Ian Perry Research scientist (emeritus) Pacific Biological Station, Fisheries and Oceans Canada Nanaimo, B.C., Canada Xuechan Ma Climate change specialist FAO Fisheries Division Rome, Italy and Rishi Sharma Senior fisheries resources officer FAO Fisheries Division Rome, Italy FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Rome, 2021 Required citation: Bahri, T., Vasconcellos, M., Welch, D.J., Johnson, J., Perry, R.I., Ma, X. & Sharma, R., eds. 2021. Adaptive management of fisheries in response to climate change. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 667. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb3095en The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of FAO. ISSN 2070-7010 [Print] ISSN 2664-5408 [Online] ISBN 978-92-5-133890-2 © FAO, 2021, Last updated 07/04/2021 Some rights reserved. 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The original [Language] edition shall be the authoritative edition.” Disputes arising under the licence that cannot be settled amicably will be resolved by mediation and arbitration as described in Article 8 of the licence except as otherwise provided herein. The applicable mediation rules will be the mediation rules of the World Intellectual Property Organization http://www.wipo. int/amc/en/mediation/rules and any arbitration will be conducted in accordance with the Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). Third-party materials. Users wishing to reuse material from this work that is attributed to a third party, such as tables, figures or images, are responsible for determining whether permission is needed for that reuse and for obtaining permission from the copyright holder. The risk of claims resulting from infringement of any third-party-owned component in the work rests solely with the user. Sales, rights and licensing. FAO information products are available on the FAO website (www.fao.org/ publications) and can be purchased through [email protected]. Requests for commercial use should be submitted via: www.fao.org/contact-us/licence-request. Queries regarding rights and licensing should be submitted to: [email protected]. iii Preparation of this document The preparation of this document was initiated in response to a request from the government of Canada at the 33rd session of the FAO Committee for Fisheries (COFI) to host an expert workshop on fisheries management in the context of climate change. The Technical Paper is aimed primarily at policymakers, fisheries managers and practitioners, with a view to provide preliminary guidance on responses to climate change impacts. A joint task team between FAO (Tarûb Bahri, Xuechan Ma, Marcelo Vasconcellos) and Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO Canada) (Max Kaplan) designed the draft contents of the Technical Paper and took responsibility for selecting and commissioning case studies. David Welch and Johanna Johnson (C2O Fisheries, Vanuatu) joined the task team and provided assistance for the organization and facilitation of an expert workshop that took place in Rome, Italy on 12–14 November 2019, bringing together 26 participants and chaired by Ian Perry (DFO Canada). The objectives of the workshop were to present the selected case studies of fisheries management adaptation, discuss guidance on effective fisheries management responses to climate change based on the lessons learned from the examples presented, and design the draft content of the Technical Paper. The case studies were commissioned from experts from all over the world who submitted their first drafts prior to the workshop and updated them based on the workshop outcomes. Chapters 2 and 3 were prepared based on the inputs provided by the participants in the workshop (see the list of participants in the Appendix). They were drafted by David Welch and Johanna Johnson, and finalized by Ian Perry with contributions from Tarûb Bahri, Xuechan Ma, Marcelo Vasconcellos and Rishi Sharma. All case studies (Chapters 4 to 16) were reviewed by the editors. Chapters 2 and 3 were reviewed by Manuel Barange, Johann Bell, Kevern Cochrane, Diana Fernandez Reguera, Ernesto Peñas Lado and Raymon Van Anrooy. Copy-editing, formatting and layout were provided by Evan Jeffries and Cath Perry (Swim2Birds Ltd., UK). The cover was designed by Pietro Bartoleschi. iv Abstract This report aims to improve understanding of how flexibility can be introduced into the fisheries management cycle in order to foster adaptation to climate change. This work contributes to the overall scope of improving the resilience of fisheries, reducing their vulnerability to climate change, and enabling managers to respond in a timely manner to the projected changes in the dynamics of marine resources and ecosystems. The findings build on the conclusions of previous FAO publications that highlighted the lack of evaluations of adaptation success. Thirteen case studies from different locations across the globe are analysed: Myanmar, the Northeast Atlantic, South Africa, Uruguay, south-eastern Australia, Belize, the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, the Philippines, the Mediterranean, Canada (east and west coasts) and Peru. They provide details on the challenges presented by climate-driven impacts to fisheries with a widely varied range of socio-ecological contexts, governance systems, data availability (data-poor to data-rich), geographical locations and scales, fishery types and species, and adaptation responses. Understanding the general impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and fisheries is a first step towards developing climate-adaptive fisheries management measures. Indeed, understanding the potential impacts on any specific system provides the background information necessary for selecting adaptation measures for that system. Based on the case studies presented, the most common impacts of climate change are shifts in species distributions, changes to productivity, and changes to species composition. A ‘good practice’ chapter pulls out the lessons learned from the case studies on how to adaptively manage fisheries in the face of climate change; it highlights the importance of adaptive and participatory management along with foundational principles of fisheries management. An effective fisheries management system is the first foundation of climate-resilient fisheries. The second foundation is stakeholder participation, whether it entails one-way flows of information (passive participation) or self-mobilization of stakeholders with independent community control of management. The third foundation relates to uncertainty and risk; a set of precautionary actions that can be taken in the planning and implementation phases of the fisheries management cycle are identified to assist decision-makers in addressing uncertainty and risk arising from climate impacts. Finally, the fourth foundation of climate-resilient fisheries is adaptive management: this recognizes the impossibility of determining the perfect management strategy and calls for management strategy evaluation, with periodic monitoring of status indicators and revision of management measures. Criteria are included to assist with selecting good practice adaptation measures, to ensure they meet minimum standards. There are three mandatory good practice criteria and two additional criteria that are considered beneficial. The mandatory criteria are: (i) the adaptation