Many seafood products marketed as “sustainable” are not. More exacting sustainability standards are needed to respond to a fast-changing world and support United Nations SDGs. Future fisheries must operate on principles that minimise impacts on marine life, adapt to climate change and allow regeneration of depleted biodiversity, while supporting and enhancing the health, wellbeing and resilience of people and communities. In an article in Nature (Roberts, C., Béné, C., Bennett, N. et al. Rethinking sustainability of marine fisheries for a fast-changing planet. npj Ocean Sustain 3, 41 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-024-00078-2), Roberts et al set out 11 actions to achieve these goals.
How future fisheries are managed is important for sustainable development and society, but it is also important because marine life is a public good that should be valued and used for the benefit of society and nature, not exploited solely for private profit, the authors argue. Given the urgency of addressing societal challenges, we must go further and faster to prepare for future risks and mitigate the already apparent effects of rapid global change and human population growth. We need to urgently scale up efforts to transform fisheries to protect marine life and support society. It is the shared responsibility of policy makers, fisheries managers, fishers and retailers to minimise the environmental impact of fishing and amplify its social benefits, of which profit is only one element. This means making better choices regarding the why, what, how, and where of capture fisheries. Importantly, examples of successful conservation of marine spaces and species do exist, often where human capacity and resources would appear limited132,161,162,163. In the context of fisheries, work aimed at improving our understanding of key drivers of effective governance frameworks and remediation activities should continue in earnest given the multitude of diverse challenges that persist in both large and small-scale operations around the world.
For artisanal and subsistence fisheries, which have a more direct link to local communities through local and domestic fish consumption, the challenge will be to design interventions that support economic development but that positively address social and environmental impacts. However, the gains to fish stocks and habitats achieved by reducing the impacts of industrial fishing, will provide opportunities to increase social benefits, reduce environmental costs and increase resilience of these fisheries.
The above principles and actions redefine the notion of sustainable fisheries to balance environmental, social, economic and institutional dimensions to rebuild marine life, restore and regenerate ecosystems, support climate change mitigation and adaptation, promote system resilience to shocks and opportunities, and improve human wellbeing. They provide an enhanced basis to re-evaluate sustainability of existing fisheries and to develop policies, procurement guidelines, regulations and incentives to guide system transformation, to the benefit of humankind and the ocean, the authors conclude.