MARINE AQUACULTURE TO MITIGATE FOOD DEFICITS CAUSED BY ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE  

As the XXI century advances, the world is becoming more populous, financially wealthier, yet less equal with a more variable and warmer climate pushing already strained natural resources to the edge, threatening food security especially for already poor countries where impacts will likely be hardest, and social, political and environmental resilience least.  This will lead inter alia to increased pressure on local food systems, possibly resulting in hunger, and mass migration to a scale that will dwarf those generated by present political dysfunctions.

Governments must not only incentivise aquaculture as a source of employment and income, but must focus their attention on producing larger quantities of food, especially in least resilient/highest risk regions. Avoiding utilisation of scarce/fragile resources (including freshwater) from terrestrial agriculture and of dependence on highly variable marine systems (Peruvian fishmeal, ENSO), efforts need to be focussed on mass culture of lower trophic species (seaweeds, shellfish) and providing culture systems adapted to increased storminess and away from areas where HABs may proliferate and threaten human health (remote sensing, modelling).

In many developed countries, aquaculture expansion is often stalled by regulatory complexities, and conflicts with other "traditional" users such as inshore fisheries or tourism. Yet, these countries have developed or are developing the technical and managerial know-how to aid the sustainable development of aquaculture in the developing countries, which will face the brunt of increased storminess, flooding and drought.  These poorer countries, on the other hand, may have inefficient governance and lack infrastructure (fabrication, transport, refrigerated/frozen storage) capacities that will be essential for aquaculture to have a significant social impact and must be supported at the same time.

In our work, we discuss the need to support aquaculture in low-resilience/low-income societies in the context of strategic benefits both to the "recipients" and to the "donors" (of both international aid and investment) as well as a matter of global equity. We focus our work on aquaculture as a mean to deliver food products and, hence, to stabilize the local access to food products in light of increased stress on global food systems.