scholarly journals Why economics matters for understanding the effects of climate change on fisheries

2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (7) ◽  
pp. 1160-1167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan C. Haynie ◽  
Lisa Pfeiffer

Abstract Haynie, A. C., and Pfeiffer, L. 2012. Why economics matters for understanding the effects of climate change on fisheries. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: . Research attempting to predict the effect of climate change on fisheries often neglects to consider how harvesters respond to changing economic, institutional, and environmental conditions, which leads to the overly simplistic prediction of “fisheries follow fish”. However, climate effects on fisheries can be complex because they arise through physical, biological, and economic mechanisms that interact or may not be well understood. Although most researchers find it obvious to include physical and biological factors in predicting the effects of climate change on fisheries, the behaviour of fish harvesters also matters for these predictions. A general but succinct conceptual framework for investigating the effects of climate change on fisheries that incorporates the biological and economic factors that determine how fisheries operate is presented. The use of this framework will result in more complete, reliable, and relevant investigations of the effects of climate change on fisheries. The uncertainty surrounding long-term projections, however, is inherent in the complexity of the system.

Author(s):  
Carlos V C Weiss ◽  
Melisa Menendez ◽  
Bárbara Ondiviela ◽  
Raúl Guanche ◽  
Iñigo J Losada ◽  
...  

Abstract The development of the marine renewable energy and offshore aquaculture sectors is susceptible to being affected by climate change. Consequently, for the long-term planning of these activities, a holistic view on the effects of climate change on energy resources and environmental conditions is required. Based on present climate and future climate scenario, favourable conditions for wind and wave energy exploitation and for farming six marine fish species are assessed using a suitability index over all European regional seas. Regarding available energy potential, the estimated changes in climate do not have direct impacts on the geographic distribution of potential regions for the energy industry (both wind and wave based), that is they pose no threat to this industry. Long-term changes in environmental conditions could however require adaptation of the aquaculture sector and especially of its exploitation areas. Opportunities for aquaculture expansion of the assessed species are identified. Possibilities for co-location of these activities are observed in the different climate scenarios. The evaluation of potential zones for the exploitation of marine renewable energy resources and offshore aquaculture represents a stepping-stone, useful for improving decision-making and assisting in the management of marine economies both in the short-term and in the long-term development of these sectors.


2010 ◽  
Vol 103 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 445-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie A. Winkler ◽  
Suzanne Thornsbury ◽  
Marco Artavia ◽  
Frank-M. Chmielewski ◽  
Dieter Kirschke ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Subhash Abhayawansa ◽  
Carol Adams

Purpose This paper aims to evaluate non-financial reporting (NFR) frameworks insofar as risk reporting is concerned. This is facilitated through analysis of the adequacy of climate- and pandemic-related risk reporting in three industries that are both significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and are at risk from climate change. The pervasiveness of pandemic and climate-change risks have been highlighted in 2020, the hottest year on record and the year the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Stakeholders might reasonably expect reporting on these risks to have prepared them for the consequences. Design/methodology/approach The current debate on the “complexity” of sustainability and NFR frameworks/standards is critically analysed in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and calls to “build back better”. Context is provided through analysis of risk reporting by the ten largest airlines and the five largest companies in each of the hotel and cruise industries. Findings Risk reporting on two significant issues, pandemics and climate change, is woefully inadequate. While very little consideration has been given to pandemic risks, disclosures on climate-related risks focus predominantly on “risks” of increased regulation rather than physical risks, indicating a short-term focus. The disclosures are dispersed across different corporate reporting media and fail to appreciate the long-term consequences or offer solutions. Mindful that a conceptual framework for NFR must address this, the authors propose a new definition of materiality and recommend that sustainable development risks and opportunities be placed at the core of a future framework for connected/integrated reporting. Research limitations/implications For sustainable development risks to be perceived as “real” by managers, further research is needed to determine the nature and extent of key sustainable development risks and the most effective mitigation strategies. Social implications This paper highlights the importance of recognising the complexity of the issues facing organisations, society and the planet and addressing them by encouraging robust consideration of the interdependencies in evolving approaches to corporate reporting. Originality/value This study contributes to the current debate on the future of corporate reporting in light of two significant interconnected crises that threaten business and society – the pandemic and climate change. It provides evidence to support a long-term oriented and holistic approach to risk management and reporting.


2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (7) ◽  
pp. 1120-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth F. Drinkwater ◽  
George L. Hunt ◽  
Olafur S. Astthorsson ◽  
Erica J. H. Head

Abstract Drinkwater, K. F., Hunt, G. L. Jr, Astthorsson, O. S., and Head, E. J. H. 2012. Comparative studies of climate effects on polar and subpolar ocean ecosystems, progress in observation and prediction: an introduction. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: . Background to and content of this part-product of the second ESSAS (Ecosystem Studies of Sub-Arctic Seas) symposium is provided, along with a call for future work of such nature to be continued, expanded, and enhanced, specifically with a view to determining global variations in resources and dynamics attributable to climate change.


2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1712) ◽  
pp. 20160032 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert I. Colautti ◽  
Jon Ågren ◽  
Jill T. Anderson

Warmer and drier climates have shifted phenologies of many species. However, the magnitude and direction of phenological shifts vary widely among taxa, and it is often unclear when shifts are adaptive or how they affect long-term viability. Here, we model evolution of flowering phenology based on our long-term research of two species exhibiting opposite shifts in floral phenology: Lythrum salicaria , which is invasive in North America, and the sparse Rocky Mountain native Boechera stricta . Genetic constraints are similar in both species, but differences in the timing of environmental conditions that favour growth lead to opposite phenological shifts under climate change. As temperatures increase, selection is predicted to favour earlier flowering in native B. stricta while reducing population viability, even if populations adapt rapidly to changing environmental conditions. By contrast, warming is predicted to favour delayed flowering in both native and introduced L. salicaria populations while increasing long-term viability. Relaxed selection from natural enemies in invasive L. salicaria is predicted to have little effect on flowering time but a large effect on reproductive fitness. Our approach highlights the importance of understanding ecological and genetic constraints to predict the ecological consequences of evolutionary responses to climate change on contemporary timescales. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Human influences on evolution, and the ecological and societal consequences’.


2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442095386
Author(s):  
Frans Sengers ◽  
Bruno Turnheim ◽  
Frans Berkhout

Concerted action on climate change will require a continuing stream of social and technical innovations whose development and transmission will be influenced by public policies. New ways of doing things frequently emerge in innovative small-scale initiatives – ‘experiments’ – across sectors of economic and social life. These experiments are actionable expressions of novel governance and socio-technical arrangements. Mobilising and generalising the outputs of these experiments could lead to deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the long-term. It is often assumed that the groundswell of socio-technical and governance experiments will ‘scale-up’ to systemic change. But the mechanisms for these wider, transformative impacts of experiments have not been fully conceptualised and explained. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for the mobilisation, generalisation and embedding of the outputs and outcomes of climate governance experiments. We describe and illustrate four ‘embedding mechanisms’ – (1) replication-proliferation; (2) expansion-consolidation; (3) challenging-reframing; and (4) circulation-anchoring – for entwined governance and socio-technical experiments. Through these mechanisms knowledge, capabilities, norms and networks developed by experiments become mobile and generic, and come to be embedded in reconfigured socio-technical and governance systems.


2017 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javid Kavousi ◽  
Gunnar Keppel

Abstract Refugia can facilitate the persistence of biodiversity under changing environmental conditions, such as anthropogenic climate change, and therefore constitute the best chance of survival for many coral species in the wild. Despite an increasing amount of literature, the concept of coral reef refugia remains poorly defined; so that climate change refugia have been confused with other phenomena, including temporal refuges, pristine habitats and physiological processes such as adaptation and acclimatization. We propose six criteria that determine the capacity of refugia to facilitate species persistence, including long-term buffering, protection from multiple climatic stressors, accessibility, microclimatic heterogeneity, size, and low exposure to non-climate disturbances. Any effective, high-capacity coral reef refugium should be characterized by long-term buffering of environmental conditions (for several decades) and multi-stressor buffering (provision of suitable environmental conditions with respect to climatic change, particularly ocean warming and acidification). Although not always essential, the remaining criteria are important for quantifying the capacity of potential refugia.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Vanem ◽  
O. N. Breivik

Abstract. Extreme weather conditions represent serious natural hazards to ship operations and may be the direct cause or contributing factor to maritime accidents. Such severe environmental conditions can be taken into account in ship design and operational windows can be defined that limits hazardous operations to less extreme conditions. Nevertheless, possible changes in the statistics of extreme weather conditions, possibly due to anthropogenic climate change, represent an additional hazard to ship operations that is less straightforward to account for in a consistent way. Obviously, there are large uncertainties as to how future climate change will affect the extreme weather conditions at sea and there is a need for stochastic models that can describe the variability in both space and time at various scales of the environmental conditions. Previously, Bayesian hierarchical space-time models have been developed to describe the variability and complex dependence structures of significant wave height in space and time. These models were found to perform reasonably well and provided some interesting results, in particular, pertaining to long-term trends in the wave climate. In this paper, a similar framework is applied to oceanic windiness and the spatial and temporal variability of the 10-m wind speed over an area in the North Atlantic ocean is investigated. When the results from the model for North Atlantic windiness is compared to the results for significant wave height over the same area, it is interesting to observe that whereas an increasing trend in significant wave height was identified, no statistically significant long-term trend was estimated in windiness. This may indicate that the increase in significant wave height is not due to an increase in locally generated wind waves, but rather to increased swell. This observation is also consistent with studies that have suggested a poleward shift of the main storm tracks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Schaebitz ◽  
Asfawossen Asrat ◽  
Henry F. Lamb ◽  
Andrew S. Cohen ◽  
Verena Foerster ◽  
...  

AbstractReconstructions of climatic and environmental conditions can contribute to current debates about the factors that influenced early human dispersal within and beyond Africa. Here we analyse a 200,000-year multi-proxy paleoclimate record from Chew Bahir, a tectonic lake basin in the southern Ethiopian rift. Our record reveals two modes of climate change, both associated temporally and regionally with a specific type of human behavior. The first is a long-term trend towards greater aridity between 200,000 and 60,000 years ago, modulated by precession-driven wet-dry cycles. Here, more favorable wetter environmental conditions may have facilitated long-range human expansion into new territory, while less favorable dry periods may have led to spatial constriction and isolation of local human populations. The second mode of climate change observed since 60,000 years ago mimics millennial to centennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and Heinrich events. We hypothesize that human populations may have responded to these shorter climate fluctuations with local dispersal between montane and lowland habitats.


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