SNAPP: Operationalizing climate resilience in marine fisheries management

Marine fisheries provide income, jobs, and nutrition for millions of people globally. Warming temperatures, acidification, and deoxygenation associated with climate change are influencing the productivity and distribution of many marine species that support fisheries. The nature of these impacts and how they affect the health of fish stocks and flows of benefits is mediated by the management context within which fisheries operate. Most fishery management systems use historical experiences to guide management. We contend that effective fisheries management under climate change will require systems that are designed for resilience and that resilient systems can buffer climate impacts. A set of principles for climate-resilient fisheries is being prepared for incorporation into processes led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in late 2019. This SNAPP working group will play a key role in developing guidance on approaches, processes, and tools that can operationalize and implement the principles in fisheries around the world. The working group will bring together fisheries experts and practitioners from nearly every continent to address three questions: (1) What key features make fisheries inherently resilient to the effects of climate change? (2) What approaches and tools confer resilience for fishery systems affected by climate change? (3) How can practitioners diagnose system resilience and identify ways in which resilience can be supported in order to enhance sustainability, economic benefits, and human well-being and equity? Insights and findings developed by this working group will be published in 2-3 peer-reviewed papers and a technical report that can be used to produce implementation guidance for climate-resilient fisheries. Efforts will also result in a decision-support tool to help guide policy choices that support resilience. We will interact routinely with key partners to ensure that results and products are relevant to fisheries policy and management at a global scale and that they can be downscaled for regional, national, and local applications. Involving participants from a variety of fishery management institutions and advisory bodies that deal with large- and small-scale fisheries, ocean law, and resilience will ensure that guidance is applicable to a wide range of fisheries across the globe.

The information here may be out of date, please refer to https://snappartnership.net/ for more current information.