The return of fishing wars?
OFFICIAL VOR RIG SUPPLIER
US RESEARCHERS ARE warning that climate change could ignite conflicts between countries competing for the same fish stocks – and preventing these will demand better global co-operation for managing the resource.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston recently, the researchers outlined the potential threats arising from depleted and/or shifting fish populations.
Christopher Costello, professor of environmental resource economics at the University of California, has developed a global-scale model of projected changes in the world’s major fish stocks due to the effects of climate change.
These changes stem from two main issues: changes in productivity and changes in range, or species’ distribution in the world’s oceans.
His analysis suggests that more than half of the world’s fisheries are likely to shrink in productivity. And as certain key species shift their distribution, there will be new winners and losers.
“As a general statement, we find that the higher latitudes tend to be the ones that gain from climate change, where fish stocks are likely to become more productive and more prevalent,” says Costello. “And the areas near the equator and tropics are likely to lose.”
That change in productivity and distribution threatens to hit low-income countries in low latitudes the hardest, agrees Michael Harte, professor of marine geography at Oregon State University. As climate impacts intensify, a cooperative, trans-boundary approach to fisheries management will be critical to protecting both fish species and the livelihoods of fishing communities around the world.
“A zero-sum approach doesn’t work in these fisheries,” he said, “and climate change just exacerbates that situation, because the stocks are moving. You can’t put barbed wire in the ocean. The challenge is that, when the fish move, the people can’t. If you’re in Indonesia, say, and productivity declines and the fish move, a fishing community can’t just move somewhere else.”
His work on a more “human-centric” approach to fisheries management highlights the benefits of cooperation. “We’re trying to show, if you don’t cooperate, this is what you’re losing. And then, what are the best practices that lead to good cooperation?”
The stakes of climate-adaptive fisheries management are high: about three billion people depend on fish for a significant portion of the protein in their diet.
“If we don’t get it right,” Harte says, “we may see a resumption of fish (trade) wars, a return to overfished and collapsed fish stocks.”
Fishing wars are not new. Among the most infamous is the ‘cod war’ stoush between the UK and Iceland in the 50s and 70s, when British gunboats tangled with Icelandic boats in disputed waters. Things calmed down when it was eventually agreed that Iceland would be allowed to catch any fish within its 200-mile territorial limit.