Fisheries Redistribution under Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is altering the ocean through warming, acidification, deoxygenation and other stressors. Taking the troubling state of global fish stocks 1 and the decline in global biodiversity levels 2 into account, this paints an alarming picture. 3 A pervasive yet overlooked issue is the impact of climate change on the distribution of fish stocks and other marine species (marine living resources or MLRs), which causes governance issues and threatens the rule of law for the oceans. For example, when fish move across static jurisdictional and management boundaries, they may become unregulated and risk being overexploited. 4 Shifting fish stocks threaten the certainty, predictability and stability of the international fisheries legal framework. They also undermine conservation and management measures (CMMs) by coastal States and regional fisheries management organisations or arrangements (RFMO/As), impeding sustainable exploitation and conservation of global fish stocks. 5 To address these challenges, the legal framework applicable to fisheries and marine biodiversity must be flexible and adaptive in response to redistribution of fish stocks across scales, or risk undermining the rule of law. Since this framework 1 D. Pauly and D. Zeller, 'Catch Reconstructions Reveal that Global Marine Fisheries Catches Are Higher than Reported and Declining' (2016) 7 Nature Communications 10244. 2 S. Diaz et al. (eds.), Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Bonn: IPBES, 2019). 3 UN Environment, 2020: A crunch year for the biodiversity and climate emergency, Press Release 23 December 2019 <www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/2020-crunchyear-biodiversity-and-climate-emergencies>.