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Effects of Climate Change on the Economics and the Sustainability of Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Air, Climate Change and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2022) | Viewed by 27778

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Vicky Wing Yee Lam

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Guest Editor

Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, The University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
Interests: fisheries economics; climate change; fisheries; socio-economics; nature resource economics; sustainability; vulnerability/risk assessment; global change; adaptation

Dr. Muhammed Oyinlola

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Guest Editor

Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, The University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
Interests: aquaculture systems and sustainability; spatial ecology; scenarios development and modelling; coastal dynamics and process; age and growth estimation; climate change and resources use

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Marine fisheries and aquaculture play an important role in guaranteeing food security in many countries. They also provide livelihoods and wealth generation opportunities to coastal communities with substantial job opportunities for people in both harvesting and post-harvesting sectors. In addition, these sectors provide considerable economic impacts to other industries and economic sectors through the productive value chain of many countries. Therefore, marine fisheries and aquaculture contribute to national accounts through both direct and indirect economic effects.

However, surging seafood demand due to the increase in the global human population, rising incomes, and consumer desire for seafood pose threats to marine resources. Further, fisheries and aquaculture have already been affected by various existing threats, including pollution, habitat degradation, sedimentation, invasive species, and overfishing. On top of these, climate change is projected to further reduce marine fisheries and aquaculture production.

Increase in human-induced emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere leads to changes in different physical and biogeochemical properties in the ocean. These changes include sea temperature level, oceanic stratification, ocean acidity and loss in oxygen content, salinity, and primary productivity. These changes are projected to affect the biology, phenology, distribution, and abundance of marine species, leading to a decline in global fisheries. The physiology of farm species and potential marine areas that are suitable for the development of marine aquaculture are also affected by climate change. The potential impacts of climate change on fisheries and marine aquaculture would have implications for economics, society, food security, and sustainable seafood production management at both regional and global scales. Understanding these impacts is crucial to the successful development and implementation of effective mitigation and adaptation tools, strategies, and measures for managing fisheries and marine aquaculture under climate change.

Thus, this Special Issue seeks to understand climate change impacts on the economics of marine fisheries and aquaculture. We invite papers focusing on analyzing the impacts of climate change on the economics and sustainability of marine fisheries and marine aquaculture. Further, papers that advise on potential solutions to climate impacts on economics and sustainable development of fisheries are welcomed.

Dr. Vicky Wing Yee Lam
Dr. Muhammed Oyinlola
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Climate change
Marine fisheries
Marine aquaculture
Mariculture
Fisheries economics
Sustainable development
Sustainable management
Mitigation strategies
Adaptation strategies
Climate solutions

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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15 pages, 893 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Vulnerability Assessment of Pacific Whiteleg Shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) Farms and Vendors in Davao, Philippines Using FishVool

by Edison D. Macusi, Nitcel Aymie Albarido, Misael B. Clapano and Mudjekeewis D. Santos

Sustainability 2022, 14(8), 4541; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084541 - 11 Apr 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3253

Abstract

The impacts of climate change on shrimp aquaculture can vary widely and can have environmental and socioeconomic consequences. This study assessed the vulnerability to climate change impacts of selected small-scale shrimp farms of Penaeus vannamei and shrimpfish market vendors in the Davao region, the Philippines, using a modified Fisheries Vulnerability Assessment Tool (FishVool). Shrimp farmers and vendors were interviewed using two separate semi-structured questionnaires. A total of thirty-nine (n = 39) shrimp farmers and forty-eight (n = 48) market vendors from various market areas within the region were interviewed. Data regarding exposure (E), sensitivity (S), and adaptive capacity (AC) were collected following the FishVool parameters with modifications. Results revealed that the overall climate change vulnerability of the shrimp farmers was medium (M), where both exposure and adaptive capacity were low (L) while sensitivity was medium (M). In addition, the shrimp market vulnerability of the various sites examined revealed medium (M) scores for markets in Pantukan, Mabini, Tagum, Maco, Lupon, Davao City, and Digos, and high (H) vulnerability scores for the markets in Panabo and Sta Cruz. Overall, the study provided a better understanding of shrimp farming in relation to climate change impacts and vulnerability and provided information for future shrimp farm management, marketing, and climate change adaptation in the region. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Climate Change on the Economics and the Sustainability of Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture)

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30 pages, 9505 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Impacts of Environmental and Socio-Economic Risks on the Fisheries in the Mediterranean Region

by Nathalie Hilmi, Shekoofeh Farahmand, Vicky W. Y. Lam, Mine Cinar, Alain Safa and Juliette Gilloteaux

Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 10670; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910670 - 26 Sep 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5237

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the impacts of the environmental and socio-economic risks on the fisheries in the Mediterranean region from an economic point of view. A balanced panel of 21 Mediterranean countries for 2001–2018 has been estimated by the GLS method, considering heteroskedasticity and correlation among cross sections. The volume of fish landed and landed values have been considered in two models. The results show that increases in sea bottom and surface temperature, H⁺ ion concentration and salinity threaten the fisheries in the Mediterranean region for the volume of fish landed and that sea surface temperature and salinity negatively influence landed values. In addition, there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between human population and fisheries. Moreover, the Human Development Index (HDI), an indicator of countries’ adaptive capacity, has a positive impact on fisheries and indicates that countries can safeguard fisheries by improving their adaptive capacity. Finally, our results strongly show the risk of climate change for the fisheries in the Mediterranean region and that fisheries are adversely impacted by climate change as well as worsening socio-economic conditions in the absence of adaptation plans. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Climate Change on the Economics and the Sustainability of Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture)

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14 pages, 4135 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Developing an Ensembled Machine Learning Prediction Model for Marine Fish and Aquaculture Production

by Labonnah Farzana Rahman, Mohammad Marufuzzaman, Lubna Alam, Md Azizul Bari, Ussif Rashid Sumaila and Lariyah Mohd Sidek

Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 9124; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169124 - 14 Aug 2021

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3297

Abstract

The fishing industry is identified as a strategic sector to raise domestic protein production and supply in Malaysia. Global changes in climatic variables have impacted and continue to impact marine fish and aquaculture production, where machine learning (ML) methods are yet to be extensively used to study aquatic systems in Malaysia. ML-based algorithms could be paired with feature importance, i.e., (features that have the most predictive power) to achieve better prediction accuracy and can provide new insights on fish production. This research aims to develop an ML-based prediction of marine fish and aquaculture production. Based on the feature importance scores, we select the group of climatic variables for three different ML models: linear, gradient boosting, and random forest regression. The past 20 years (2000–2019) of climatic variables and fish production data were used to train and test the ML models. Finally, an ensemble approach named voting regression combines those three ML models. Performance matrices are generated and the results showed that the ensembled ML model obtains R² values of 0.75, 0.81, and 0.55 for marine water, freshwater, and brackish water, respectively, which outperforms the single ML model in predicting all three types of fish production (in tons) in Malaysia. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Climate Change on the Economics and the Sustainability of Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture)

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Review

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19 pages, 2567 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceReview

Environmental and Socioeconomic Impacts of Shrimp Farming in the Philippines: A Critical Analysis Using PRISMA

by Edison D. Macusi, Darshel Ester P. Estor, Elaine Q. Borazon, Misael B. Clapano and Mudjekeewis D. Santos

Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2977; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052977 - 3 Mar 2022

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 14481

Abstract

Shrimp aquaculture is under pressure to increase its production to meet the growing demand for food from a growing population. In the Philippines, aquaculture has experienced the shift from milkfish to prawn, with its attractive marketable price. This intensification has led to negative and positive impacts, which have raised a range of environmental and socioeconomic problems. This paper reviews the environmental and socioeconomic challenges that the shrimp aquaculture industry faces using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. We examine the gaps and the changes that are required to revitalize the industry. We examine and assess the impacts of shrimp culture on the environment, e.g., shrimp farm management, marine pollution, disease outbreaks, and the social, economic, and climate change impacts. The presence of viral diseases, such as White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV), Monodon Baculovirus (MBV), Infectious Hypodermal and Hematopoietic Necrosis Virus (IHHNV), Hepatopancreatic Parvovirus (HPV), and Yellow Head Virus (YHV), have caused approximate losses in the industry of 40,080 mt in 1997, and 51,000 mt in 2014. Recommended strategies and policy changes are considered for the improvement of shrimp aquaculture, including disease management, the adoption of good aquaculture practices, proper environmental monitoring, sustainable practices at the farm level, and priorities for cooperation among the concerned government agencies and local governments, as well as the involvement of state universities and colleges, for better management practices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Climate Change on the Economics and the Sustainability of Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture)

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