Aquaculture Canada and WAS North America 2022

August 15 - 18, 2022

St Johns, Newfoundland, Canada

RECONCILING CLIMATE CHANGE AND AQUACULTURE: VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENTS AND EVOLVING RESEARCH NEEDS

 

Gregor K Reid

 

Centre for Marine Applied Research

27 Parker street, COVE

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

B2Y 4T5

 



Climate change threatens our ability to ensure global food security, eradicate poverty, and achieve sustainable development . Aquaculture is well positioned to help meet the world’s future seafood needs, but heavy reliance of most global aquaculture on the ambient environment and ecosystem services suggests inherent vulnerability to climate change effects. While m itigation of climate change  is essential , it  remains elusive.

A daptation then becomes the only pragmatic option .  Reconciling climate change and aquaculture  to support adaptation is a huge challenge as decision making typically

 needs to consider

large amounts of information encompassing multi ple disciplines.

 This results in increasing demands for addressing knowledge gaps and accountability for  aquaculture  research.  A climate change vulnerability assessment is one method that triages threats to prioritize adaptation efforts and t his approach  has  recently begun to see application in aquaculture.

This presentation explores potential roles for climate change vulnerability assessments and

how they could

compliment the evolving needs of climate change and aquaculture research, which is crucial to support planned adaptation.