Advancing Climate-Resilient Marine Fisheries during the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development

The ability to understand and enhance resilience of marine fisheries will be important for determining options, pathways, and priorities to help sustain fisheries and fishing communities under climate change. As climate change impacts are being realized, many fisheries around the world face immediate needs to:

1. Understand how climate change is affecting (or may affect) the fishery system.
2. Evaluate how resilience-supporting attributes of the fishery system are currently functioning and may be affected by different types, magnitudes, and combinations of future stressors.
3. Assess resilience limitations and barriers at present or likely to arise in the future.
4. Identify strategies and pathways that can be operationalized to support climate resilience in the fishery.

This project aims to advance climate resilience in marine fisheries by supporting fishery-specific planning efforts, co-developing multi-fishery syntheses with stakeholders at local to global scales, and improving resources for climate resilience assessment and planning. Through case studies, questionnaires, and workshops, we will collaborate with participants in the FishSCORE2030 network to synthesize issues, strategies, and needs related to climate resilience in marine fisheries.

Additionally, we will work to create resources to support use of the Climate-Resilient Fisheries Planning tool. The tool is designed to guide users through a six-step process to define their fishery system and goals, identify current and future climate impacts, assess attributes and conditions that may confer or constrain climate resilience, and identify and prioritize resilience-enhancing actions. We will develop a facilitator’s guide and training resources for using the tool, as well as translate key resources to other languages. These products will enhance the ability to apply this assessment and planning tool in diverse fisheries.