Image: “Fish market in Saint-Louis” by Evgeni Zotov, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
If climate change continues unchecked, developing countries could face both decreased crop production and decreased seafood production, finds a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The authors looked at how food production on land and in the sea will be threatened by climate change and what the future effects on biodiversity, livelihoods and food security will be. They adopted the human development index (HDI) — a global index of life expectancy, education and per capita income. They found that all of the low human development index countries will face declines in both agriculture and fisheries production by 2050.
“Seafood is an important protein source globally,” says co-author Tyler Eddy, CORU Fellow at UBC. “While in high human development index countries seafood may be one of many protein options, many coastal communities in low human development index countries rely on seafood as a protein source.”