Objectives:
The main objective of this Module is to develop improved ways of assessing vulnerability of fisheries to future climate change, in the context of other drivers of change: supply-demand changes, governance scenarios, macro-economic change (e.g. fuel price changes). Specific objectives are to use an IPCC-type risk exposure-sensitivity-adaptive capacity analysis to: 1. Elucidate the pathways of potential climate impact on fish capture, aquaculture production and trade and consumption 2. Develop a simple method of assessing climate change vulnerability at scales relevant to policy formulation & development assistance targeting 3. Produce analysis of vulnerability of fisheries to climate change at global level (for small pelagic fish) and case studies of a number of LMEs (for all fisheries). Where possible, provide quantified predictions of impacts on each of these sub-systems under different climate, population change, fuel price change and trade scenarios.

Description of Research
The observed and anticipated impacts of climate change on biophysical systems will have significant potential impacts that themselves represent opportunities, challenges and potential dangers for societies and economies. Current scientific knowledge of impacts and vulnerabilities is based on models that rely on future socio-economic scenarios and interpretative reviews of location-specific case-studies. A major recent advance is the development of a quantitative indicator-based implementation of the vulnerability assessment frameworks outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. We will use this indicator-based framework to assess the vulnerability of the national economies to the impacts of climate change on fisheries systems, and to develop ways of assessing vulnerability of key components of the global fishery sector (e.g. the human and capital investment in the fishmeal sector). Vulnerability can be defined as a combination of the extrinsic exposure of groups or individuals to a hazard, such as climate change, their intrinsic sensitivity to the hazard, and their adaptive capacity to modify exposure to, absorb, and recover from losses stemming from the hazard, and to exploit new opportunities that arise in the process of adaptation (see figure below). Although the approach is typically applied to a single risk or hazard (such as climate change) there are developing applications to multi-hazards situations, such as the analysis of the vulnerability of India’s food security to climate change and globalisation.

In WP 15 of Quest theme III project, “Global-scale impacts of climate change: an integrated multi-sectoral assessment”, we have proposed to refine existing vulnerability analyses in two ways:
(i) by separating capture fisheries into marine and freshwater catches
(ii) exploring further sub-division of the ‘marine’ component into high seas and coastal fisheries.

Here we seek to build on this work and propose up to six further developments of the vulnerability assessment framework:

• Exploring the scaling of the analysis at fishing enterprise/fleet level, national economic level and LME level.
• Incorporating global fishmeal demand and production (Module 3)
• Incorporating fish abundance by mass class and fisheries catches projected under the range of climate scenarios (Modules 1 & 2)
• Accounting for fuel dependency and rising fuel prices as an additional risk that faces the fishery sector
• Developing human population growth and changing fish consumption and trade pattern scenarios as drivers for increased demand for fishery and aquaculture products
• Considering different policy scenarios for coastal and marine ecosystems management, developed from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

We anticipate that these issues will be incorporated into the risk exposure and sensitivity indices as appropriate. Previous analysis of national economic vulnerability to potential climate-risk exposure of fisheries used HAD3 GCM-derived surface air temperature predictions for IPCC III scenarios for economic development to 2050, making assumptions that higher surface air temperature changes would lead to greater magnitude of (negative) fishery changes. This project will have access to much more reliable and direct predictions of climate impacts on fish stock abundance/size composition (from modules 1 & 2), representing a major improvement in the risk exposure variable. Data on fishery catches, fleet composition, national fish imports, exports and consumption and employment in the sector will be obtained from UN FAO statistical databases for the national level and from the Sea Around Us project website for LMEs. Global estimates of fuel consumption by fishing fleets have been published , as have analyses of predicted changes in fish supply and demand under various population change, economic growth and trade policy scenarios, and future fish catches under different resource conservation policy scenarios . Where necessary we will seek collaboration with the authors to ensure latest understanding of the impacts of these factors on the fisheries sector. These updated and re-conceptualised vulnerability frameworks will be used to explore the overall consequences of various scenarios of climate change, changing demand and fuel prices, and differing global fishery policy trends, primarily on marine fish abundance by mass class and fisheries catches.