Impacts of Climate Change on Aquaculture and Fisheries: An Integrated Approach for Adaptation and Mitigation

Abstract

The impacts of climate change, owing to their potentially vast reach and scale, embody a critical challenge for fisheries and aquaculture, and the livelihood of many coastal countries including Bangladesh, most specifically the fishing communities living close to these resources. The fisheries and aquaculture sector in the coastal areas is subjugated by exportoriented saltwater shrimp and freshwater prawn farming. However, different variables including drought, cyclone, flood, salinity, rainfall, sea level rise, and sea surface temperature have profound antagonistic effects on shrimp and prawn production. Fishery resources are very sensitive to the seashore, river flows and elevation of the lake, and variations related to ocean, coastal and wildlife productivity. Adoption of climate change with such high exposure to climate risks is becoming an important concern for fisheries organizations. Although fisheries have always had to cope with variable production and unpredictable changes in weather, future climate change will bring shifts in climatic means and in the frequency and severity of extreme events that are beyond the coping capacity of even the more flexible and adapted fishery systems. Considering vulnerability in fishery production systems to the effects of climate change on coastal aquaculture, it is still worth investing in building the capacity of fishery production systems to adapt future climate change scenarios. The main reason is that the most options for building adaptive capacity are also required to manage fish stocks effectively and to reduce the poverty and vulnerability of fishing-dependent people.