Catch It Like It’s Hot: Climate change hits seafood finances and demands systemic adaptation

Climate change threatens the global seafood industry. It adds and amplifies a complex, interlinked web of physical, economic, financial and systemic risks, impacting both aquaculture and wild-capture fisheries. Their physical, economic and financial manifestations cascade down value chains and affect economies, livelihoods, social structures, food security and geopolitics.

The report:

• Shows that the seafood industry is significantly affected by climate change, with losses in fishing revenue potentially reaching USD 15 billion by 2050 under high emissions scenarios, while adaptation investments remain minimal.
• Introduces a typology of 83 climate change-driven risks for the seafood industry, demonstrating through case studies that many of these risks are already destroying billions of dollars of financial value.
• Maps the pathways by which physical risks become financial risks.
• Argues that bio-physical variables such as sea temperature, extreme weather events or fish biomass are key drivers of present and future financial performance.