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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CLOCK (CLIMATE ADAPTATION TO SHIFTING STOCKS)

Teaser

Summary

Climate change is already impacting marine species distribution casing shifts in species ranges with poorly known consequences and a lack of evidence on the adaptation strategies that can be most effective in ecological, social and economic terms. This projects aims to understand to what extent current management systems can overcome the effects of climate change distribution shifts and what are the adaptation measures that can allow equitable and sustainable livelihoods over the long term. The project specifically looks at three management systems that are at high risk: property rights over space, property rights over stocks and marine protected areas. These management regimes are broadly extended globally and are associated to sustainable fisheries management. However, the effect of climate change distribution shifts on the suitability of these management systems is unknown. Results of this research are key for planning adaptation in fisheries from the local scale of territorial rights for fisheries to the broader scale of transboundary agreements over shifting stocks. Adaptation of the complex fisheries social-ecological system is needed to maintain a system that provides food and animal protein to millions of people, supports a large amount of livelihoods and economic sectors linked to the oceans and keep many cultural values associated. The overall objectives of CLOCK are to: 1) identify and understand these new challenges to fisheries; 2) develop a novel approach for fisheries adaptation; 3) provide new empirical evidence on potential adaptation solutions and 4) help introduce fisheries in the international adaptation policy agenda.

Work performed

Since the beginning of the project, progress has been achieved in all of the objectives of CLOCK. For understanding the new challenges that climate change raise to fisheries (Objective 1), a combination of bio-economic models including climate change distribution changes have been developed for international transboundary fisheries and for coastal marine reserves, with two publications, one submitted and one in preparation. An additional bio-economic model is now under development for TURFs. Preliminary results from these studies are showing that countries are able to negotiate transboundary agreements over shifting stocks when the share of quota for the stock loosing country is big enough. In marine reserves, spatial management today can be a resilient strategy for long term sustainable management. Also for Objective 1, the team has collected evidence on the available studies looking at marine commercial species distribution shifts, to better understand the magnitude and geographical spread of current knowledge on this specific impact. A paper is undergoing in this respect and has been presented at top international conferences, showing that ecological and socioeconomic impacts of shifting stocks do not always align. An additional review has been conducted for the economic impacts of distribution shifts, also prepared for publication.
To understand the process of adaptation to climate change impacts and develop a new adaptation framework (Objective 2), and to show new empirical evidence of adaptation (Objective 3), we are considering fisheries as complex social-ecological systems. On one side, existing frameworks to understand adaptation in natural resources dependent communities, including resilience, vulnerability analyses and adaptation actions have been systematically compared in order to propose a novel adaptation framework (paper submitted and presented at international conferences) that will be used for the analysis of the case study data. On the other side, we are analyzing three different types of fisheries in the project. First, a case study in Galicia (northwest Spain) for small-scale fisheries is under development where two stakeholder consultations and a survey to fishers and managers was implemented, gathering 460 observations for further analyzing the adaptation processes. At the same time, an industrial fishery in the Basque Country also linked to high cultural services in the region has been explored through statistical analysis of catch and environmental data, and by means of in depth stakeholder interviews. All datasets are now being analyzed by the team members.

Final results

As a result, from the already performed tasks and existing outputs, together with the planed tasks and future deliverables we expect to provide evidence of novel adaptation approaches and evidence to better manage fisheries under climate change impacts on species distribution. These adaptation solutions will not only address sustainability from an ecological perspective but also from a socioeconomic one, identifying what are the factors, processes and configurations of social-ecological systems that allow people to adapt to climate change.
The set of publications and expected outputs will go beyond the state of the art by linking specific climate impacts to adaptation solutions, and by linking adaptation solutions to specific processes in the system such as communication among actors, participation or co-management. To date, very little evidence exists on preferences towards adaptation actions in artisanal or industrial fisheries, and with this project we will be able to show examples of what works. For example, preliminary results from the Basque case study show that shifts in distribution of catches of tropical tunas are not only due to the species distributional changes but that international agreements, and more so, technology changes have a huge impact in the location of the activity. In the same line, results from the simulation exercise for marine reserves shows how an optimal spatial design of marine reserve networks now can be resilient to climate change expected impacts under a number of scenarios. These preliminary results shed some light on the weight that management and institutional policy decisions can have on how well a fishery adapts to climate change impacts.