Socio-economic Impacts—Fisheries

Fishers and scientists have known for over 100 years that the status of fish stocks can be greatly influenced by prevailing climatic conditions. Based on historical sea surface temperature data, the North Sea has been identified as one of 20 ‘hot spots’ of climate change globally and projections for the next 100 years suggest that the region will continue to warm. The consequences of this rapid temperature rise are already being seen in shifts in species distribution and variability in stock recruitment. This chapter reviews current evidence for climate change effects on fisheries in the North Sea—one of the most important fishing grounds in the world—as well as available projections for North Sea fisheries in the future. Discussion focuses on biological, operational and wider market concerns, as well as on possible economic consequences. It is clear that fish communities and the fisheries that target them will be very different in 50 or 100 years’ time and that management and governance will need to adapt accordingly

Working paper analysing the economic implications of the proposed 30% target for areal protection in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framewor

58 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables- The World Economic Forum now ranks biodiversity loss as a top-five risk to the global economy, and the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework proposes an expansion of conservation areas to 30% of the earth’s surface by 2030 (hereafter the “30% target”), using protected areas (PAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). - Two immediate concerns are how much a 30% target might cost and whether it will cause economic losses to the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors. - Conservation areas also generate economic benefits (e.g. revenue from nature tourism and ecosystem services), making PAs/Nature an economic sector in their own right. - If some economic sectors benefit but others experience a loss, high-level policy makers need to know the net impact on the wider economy, as well as on individual sectors. [...]A. Waldron, K. Nakamura, J. Sze, T. Vilela, A. Escobedo, P. Negret Torres, R. Button, K. Swinnerton, A. Toledo, P. Madgwick, N. Mukherjee were supported by National Geographic and the Resources Legacy Fund. V. Christensen was supported by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2019-04901. M. Coll and J. Steenbeek were supported by EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 817578 (TRIATLAS). D. Leclere was supported by TradeHub UKRI CGRF project. R. Heneghan was supported by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Acciones de Programacion Conjunta Internacional (PCIN-2017-115). M. di Marco was supported by MIUR Rita Levi Montalcini programme. A. Fernandez-Llamazares was supported by Academy of Finland (grant nr. 311176). S. Fujimori and T. Hawegawa were supported by The Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (2-2002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan and the Sumitomo Foundation. V. Heikinheimo was supported by Kone Foundation, Social Media for Conservation project. K. Scherrer was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 682602. U. Rashid Sumaila acknowledges the OceanCanada Partnership, which funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). T. Toivonen was supported by Osk. Huttunen Foundation & Clare Hall college, Cambridge. W. Wu was supported by The Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (2-2002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan. Z. Yuchen was supported by a Ministry of Education of Singapore Research Scholarship Block (RSB) Research FellowshipPeer reviewe

Organismos modificados para el medio ambiente: historias de éxito y fracaso, y qué hemos aprendido de ellas

The expectations raised in the mid-1980s on the potential of genetic engineering for in situ remediation of environmental pollution have not been entirely fulfilled. Yet, we have learned a good deal about the expression of catabolic pathways by bacteria in their natural habitats, and how environmental conditions dictate the expression of desired catalytic activities. The many different choices between nutrients and responses to stresses form a network of transcriptional switches which, given the redundance and robustness of the regulatory circuits involved, can be neither unraveled through standard genetic analysis nor artificially programmed in a simple manner. Available data suggest that population dynamics and physiological control of catabolic gene expression prevail over any artificial attempt to engineer an optimal performance of the wanted catalytic activities. In this review, several valuable spin-offs of past research into genetically modified organisms with environmental applications are discussed, along with the impact of Systems Biology and Synthetic Biology in the future of environmental biotechnology.The work of our laboratories cited in this article was funded by grants of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, the European Union, and the Conservation Biology Program of the BBVA Foundation.Peer reviewe

Organismos modificados para el medio ambiente: historias de éxito y fracaso, y qué hemos aprendido de ellas

The expectations raised in the mid-1980s on the potential of genetic engineering for in situ remediation of environmental pollution have not been entirely fulfilled. Yet, we have learned a good deal about the expression of catabolic pathways by bacteria in their natural habitats, and how environmental conditions dictate the expression of desired catalytic activities. The many different choices between nutrients and responses to stresses form a network of transcriptional switches which, given the redundance and robustness of the regulatory circuits involved, can be neither unraveled through standard genetic analysis nor artificially programmed in a simple manner. Available data suggest that population dynamics and physiological control of catabolic gene expression prevail over any artificial attempt to engineer an optimal performance of the wanted catalytic activities. In this review, several valuable spin-offs of past research into genetically modified organisms with environmental applications are discussed, along with the impact of Systems Biology and Synthetic Biology in the future of environmental biotechnology.The work of our laboratories cited in this article was funded by grants of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, the European Union, and the Conservation Biology Program of the BBVA Foundation.Peer reviewe