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Oceans, seas and coastal areas provide mankind with manifold goods and ecosystem services fundamental to human well-being, global food security and nutrition. They form an integrated and essential component of the Earth’s ecosystem and are critical to sustainable development.
Fisheries and aquaculture offer ample opportunities to reduce hunger and improve nutrition, alleviate poverty, generate economic growth and ensure better use of natural resources.
If the current trend in unsustainable uses of marine resources is not reversed, the ability of our oceans to deliver food for future generations will be severely compromised.
Curbing overfishing while promoting responsible and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture practices and preserving healthy marine environments are among humankind’s best opportunities to deliver highly nutritious food to a growing population.
Investing in Blue Growth - the sustainable management and use of aquatic resources and adoption of ecosystem approaches - can boost economic growth, increase food security, improve nutrition and reduce poverty.
The bulk of capture fisheries production comes from coastal waters, where both the productivity and quality of fish stocks are severely affected by pollution. Capture fisheries and aquaculture are also threatened by competing demands from hydropower development and water diversion for industrial use. Furthermore, the vital contributions of fisheries and aquaculture to the world’s well-being and prosperity remain constrained by poor governance, management and practices. Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing continues to be an obstacle to achieving sustainable fisheries. Climate change is adding a further challenge.
Stresses caused by human activity on the oceans’ life support systems are widely acknowledged to have reached unsustainable levels. Today, 61 percent of commercially important assessed marine fish stocks worldwide are fully fished, 29 percent are overfished. About 90 percent of large predatory fish stocks are already depleted. Our oceans and seas are under risk of irreversible damage to habitats, ecological functions, and biodiversity because of overfishing, climate change and ocean acidification, pollution, unsustainable coastal area development and the unwanted impacts from the extraction of non-living ocean resources.
If the current trend in unsustainable uses of marine resources is not reversed, their ability to deliver food for future generations will be severely compromised. At risk are hundreds of millions of people who depend on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods, food security and nutrition, with small-scale coastal fishing communities particularly affected.