European Seafood Production under Climate Change: Assessing Economic and Social Consequences

Climate change has been observed to have a significant impact on the distribution of aquatic species and productivity of aquaculture systems across the globe. This affects the level of food production, the livelihoods of communities that depend on fisheries and aquaculture, and the future sustainability of these sectors. As in all other parts of the world, climate change will have inequitable and diverse impacts on economic growth across Europe, creating winners and losers. The European H2020 project ClimeFish investigates the impacts of climate change in aquatic food production at the European and regional scale, for the three main production sectors: marine fisheries, lakes and ponds and marine aquaculture. ClimeFish has developed a process for conducting socio-economic impact assessment by first identifying the effect(s) of climate change on the biological properties of both fish and aquaculture species, and secondly assessing the socio-economic impacts based on these biological forecasts, collecting additional socio-economic data and feedback from relevant stakeholders. Here, we provide an overview of the methods and work conducted in seven different case studies will be provided, focusing on both opportunities and threats within the three sectors and geographical locations around Europe as well as a European wide analysis. Challenges related to the data collection and analysis, as well as potential ways of overcoming them, are discussed