Comment un océan sain peut-il améliorer la santé humaine et améliorer le bien-être sur une planète en évolution rapide ?

Fish and other aquatic foods feed more than 3 billion people — nearly 40 percent of the world’s population (FAO 2022). Properly managed, the ocean could produce enough food to nourish all of humanity (Golden et al. 2021b; FAO et al. 2022; Tigchelaar et al. 2022).

The production of food from the sea is a major source of employment and income. Wild fisheries, aquaculture operations and the fishery supply chain support the work of more than 500 million people worldwide, most engaged in small-scale fisheries in LMICs (Golden et al. 2021b; FAO et al. 2022; Tigchelaar et al. 2022). They provide livelihood and food security for coastal communities worldwide, particularly marginalised and Indigenous populations (Golden et al. 2021b; FAO et al. 2022; Tigchelaar et al. 2022).

Current challenges to the health of the ocean threaten food security and increase the risk of malnutrition. These challenges include climate change, pollution, loss of marine biodiversity, improper ocean governance, ineffective fisheries management, poverty and the inequitable distribution of seafood (Winther et al. 2020; Nash et al. 2022; FAO et al. 2022; Maycock et al. 2023).

It is essential that we recognise the magnitude and severity of these threats and develop just and equitable solutions that safeguard human health and wellbeing through protecting and preserving the nutritional resources of the sea.

The ocean, food security and human health

The ocean is essential to global food security and thus to human health. Fish and other seafood currently provide vital nutrients for 40 percent of the world’s population, and overall global per capita consumption of seafood is on the rise (FAO et al. 2022; Maycock et al. 2023). Rising incomes, urbanisation, increasing recognition of the health benefits of seafood consumption, population growth and improvements in post-harvest technologies are projected to increase global demand for seafood by another 15 percent in the next decade (FAO et al. 2022; Maycock et al. 2023). This growing demand creates enormous opportunities for the development of sustainable new foods from the ocean and underscores the importance of sustainable and effective management of existing fish stocks.

Fish and other foods from the ocean are key sources of protein and thus critical to the prevention of protein-calorie malnutrition. Malnutrition is increasing globally, after declining for many decades. An estimated 828 million people now suffer from hunger, and more than 3.1 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet (FAO et al. 2023).

Fish and other foods from the ocean are key sources of micronutrients such as iron; zinc; vitamins A, B12 and D; as well as long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. They are thus critical to the prevention of micronutrient deficiency (Hicks et al. 2019; Mellin et al. 2022). Micronutrients benefit growth and neurodevelopment in infancy and childhood (Byrd et al. 2022), and they contribute to the prevention of cancer and cardiovascular disease in people of all ages (FAO and WHO 2011) (Figure 4). Although less obvious than protein calorie malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies compromise immune systems, hinder child growth and development, increase the risk of infectious and non-communicable diseases, and reduce human potential worldwide (Stevens et al. 2022).

Fish and other foods from the ocean can provide nutrition in emergency situations and in places where diets are predominantly plant-based and lacking in key micronutrients (Beal et al. 2017; Robinson et al. 2022). Dietary intake of seafood as a source of nourishment is especially valuable given that increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide appear to reduce levels of protein, zinc and iron in staple food crops (Myers et al. 2014). Seafood products are key ingredients in emergency supplementary and ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) programmes (Borg et al. 2018; Borg et al. 2019), as well as in school feeding programmes (Ahern et al. 2021), where they play a critical role in preventing micronutrient deficiency and its health consequences (Stevens et al. 2022).

Efforts to scale up the use of local aquatic foods in feeding programmes can address immediate nutritional needs, offer long-lasting coping strategies and generate local income (SDGs 1–3). These programmes are most effective when the food is procured locally and people are taught about the benefits of using it and shown how to prepare it (see Case study 3) (Jomaa et al. 2011).

Key risks to ocean food security

Changement climatique

Climate change is one of the most significant and pervasive pressures on both ocean environments and coastal communities, and the impacts of climate change are expected to become more severe in coming decades (Hughes et al. 2018). Climate change has already altered fish species distributions and productivity, and further declines are expected globally in wild and aquaculture production and in the availability of seafood-associated macro- and micronutrients (Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno 2010; Lam et al. 2020; Maulu et al. 2021).

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Adapted with permission from Byrd et al. 2022.

Climate change’s impacts on ocean health are expected to escalate in coming decades, even as international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions move forward. These worsening impacts will further jeopardise the contributions that aquatic food production systems can make to nutrition (Cheung et al. 2023). For example, under a climate scenario in which maximal warming is held below 2.0⁰C, 10 percent declines in key micronutrients from fisheries are expected. By contrast, under a ‘businessas-usual’ scenario in which there is global warming of 4–5⁰C by 2100, a 30 percent decline in fisheries production is estimated (Cheung et al. 2023). Meeting the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement is critical to limiting marine-based nutritional losses, and yet the world is not currently on track to meet these targets (IPCC 2023).

The negative impacts of climate change on nutrition are not distributed equally. Many areas of the world are ill-equipped to adapt to the losses of nutrients from fisheries. This is particularly true in the tropics, already the region most vulnerable to climate change (Allison et al. 2009; Golden et al. 2016; Lam et al. 2020). For example, under a high-emission scenario in which a 30 percent decline in nutrients from fisheries is expected globally, temperate regions will experience only minimal losses, while losses in the tropics will approach 60 percent (Cheung et al. 2023). In addition, temperature increases are expected to harm fishers’ ability to work and draw quality fish and other aquatic foods into supply chains (Fiorella et al. 2021).

Pollution

Ocean pollutants come from a variety of sources, with more than 80 percent arising on land. The threat they present to food security is still of uncertain magnitude but appears to be great and growing. Coastal communities dependent on seafood for their nutrition and livelihoods are at heightened risk of pollution exposure and adverse health effects.

Marine pollutants, including heavy metal contaminants (e.g. mercury), microplastics and antibiotics that are known to cause mortality in fish (Wear et al. 2024) and habitat degradation (Bryars and Neverauskas 2004) make their way into foods produced for human consumption and directly threaten human health (Landrigan et al. 2020; Thiele et al. 2021). Plastic pollution is a great and growing problem (Landrigan et al. 2023). Plastic pollution from fishing activities such as lost and abandoned fishing gear, which directly enters the ocean, is a particular problem for marine life and ocean habitats.

Treated and untreated wastewater from sewage, agricultural runoff and industrial discharge is released into coastal waters, resulting in microbial pollution and harmful algal blooms along the world’s coastlines.

The impacts of pollution on marine life are further magnified through the overuse and destruction of coastal ecosystems, particularly mangroves and seagrass beds that provide ‘sanitation services’ for microbial pollution and protect the ocean food supply through their natural bioremediation of waste (Armitage 2022). Coastal pollution causes a range of disease that results in over $200 billion a year in healthcare costs and lost productivity (Wenger et al. 2023).

Overfishing and wasteful fishing practices

Overfishing depletes fish breeding populations and can result in the crashing of fish stocks. Overexploitation of wild marine organisms has been exacerbated by fishing practices such as dredging and bottom trawling, which destroy some seabed habitats (Clark et al. 2016; Collie et al. 2017; Pitcher et al. 2022), and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing (Widjaja et al. 2021). Overfishing has contributed to dramatic declines in fish populations globally (Myers and Worm 2003) and already to some local species extinctions (Roberts 2007).

With the spread of distant-water fishing, the commercial fishing industry can threaten stocks of vulnerable seafood in insecure economies in the Global South, many of which have limited capacity to manage their own marine resources (Shen and Huang 2020). Investments in such sectors as infrastructure (Laurance 2018), globalised trade (Lenzen et al. 2012) and distant-water fishing (Sumaila et al. 2019) follow complex international routes and drive rapid ecosystem decline in areas far removed from the sources of finance.

By 2019, annual fishing subsidy payments by governments totalled $35.4 billion globally (Sumaila et al. 2019). Researchers estimate that two-thirds of this total flows into already wealthy industrial fleets, exacerbating overfishing (Sumaila et al. 2019). Historically, fishery subsidies from developed and large developing countries have helped the commercial fishing industry to deplete fish stocks with impunity (WTO 2022). The recent World Trade Organization agreement on fisheries subsidies (WTO 2022) may help to combat this and is explored in greater detail below.

Illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing

Much fishing activity remains unregulated, and many fish landings remain unreported, particularly across the tropics, where fisheries are often small-scale and informal, and where coastal communities are most highly dependent on fisheries for their livelihoods and food security (Song et al. 2020; FAO 2022). Adding to this complexity is a rise in illegal fishing by national and distant-water industrial fleets.

Illegal fishing can take the form of fishing without a license, dumping of low-grade fish or harvesting of fish from closed areas. Illegal fishing is estimated to cost low- and middle-income nations between $2 billion and $15 billion annually (Liddick 2014). Illegal fishing is often associated with other criminal activities, including smuggling, human rights abuses and slavery at sea (Kittinger et al. 2017; Belhabib and Le Billon 2022).

Illegal fishing is often categorised together with unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU). However, the term and approaches used to combat IUU may inadvertently criminalise small-scale fishing, exacerbating inequalities between countries and sectors, and undermining successful customary governance arrangements, including marine tenure arrangements developed, in some cases, over hundreds of years (Song et al. 2020).

Globalisation

The ability to exploit fisheries around the world is a facet of globalisation that affects nutrition and food security. Seafood resources cross multiple regional and regulatory bodies and are traded globally. In fact, seafood is currently the most heavily traded food commodity in the world (Gephart et al. 2023). Although 3 billion people, mostly in low- and middle-income coastal economies, rely on the ocean for food and income, global seafood production and revenue are controlled by a small number of companies that influence global governance (Österblom et al. 2015), highlighting the inherent inequities in the globalised seafood system.

These corporations are structured to respond primarily to global drivers, an approach that can contrast sharply with the needs of the countries where they operate and that can lead to human rights abuses in supply chains (Yea and Stringer 2021). This makes globalised commerce a major driver of inequity and of wide-scale declines in biodiversity (Carmenta et al. 2023).

Sector-specific bodies such as the Global Tuna Alliance and cross-sector collaborations between the global seafood industry and academic experts, such as SeaBOS (n.d.), offer positive models for sustainable transformation within the seafood sector.

Lack of transparency

Lack of transparency across supply chains (e.g. lack of information on the geographic origin and species of seafood products) further compounds inequity by driving overfishing and illegal fishing, and undermining global commitments to halt biodiversity decline. It presents a major obstacle to supporting food security (dos Reis et al. 2020). Both fishery governance and the finance that shapes access to fish need to be viewed as global issues and managed accordingly.

Opportunities for improving food security and human and ocean health

Strengthening marine tenure

For many people in many places, health and wellbeing depend on the security of their rights to the ocean.

Traditional and contemporary ‘marine tenure’ regimes, which societies (and in some cases, the law) use to define and regulate people’s relationship and rights associated with the ocean, coasts, shores, other aquatic spaces and associated resources, can provide a mechanism to protect health and wellbeing and buffer populations against food insecurity. These regimes can enhance food security and reduce illegal fishing. Intact and respected tenure regimes allow groups to determine who is allowed to use which resources, in what way, for how long and under what conditions. Bundled together with rights are responsibilities for and relationships around the ocean and coasts: secure tenure provides communities with the incentive and agency to responsibly govern and manage areas and resources (USAID 2017).

Marine tenure regimes are frequently informal and/or overlooked and disregarded by top-down institutional change (even those who aspire to conserve the ocean or respond to climate change). These processes of the erosion of tenure undermine the opportunity for local governance and threaten human health and wellbeing as well as local food security (Cohen and Foale 2013; Lau et al. 2019).

Aquaculture

As wild fishery production stabilised in the 1990s, in a time of growing global demand for seafood, aquaculture production began to expand, a trend that continues to the present (FAO 2022). Global aquaculture production tripled from 34 million tonnes (Mt) in 1997 to 112 Mt in 2017 (Naylor et al. 2021).

Preliminary data indicate that aquaculture accounted for 56 percent of global seafood production in 2020; both farming of marine species (aka mariculture) and aquaculture of freshwater species have contributed to this growth (FAO 2022). However, mariculture production is currently only a fraction of aquaculture production (about 30 percent by weight) (Costello et al. 2020; Naylor et al. 2021; FAO 2022).

Aquaculture, including mariculture, can be an important source of income in many areas, including low- and middle-income countries, contributing to the health and wellbeing, and boosting the economy, of coastal communities. Fish aquaculture is becoming an ever-more sophisticated industry, as well as an important global source of protein-rich food.

Aquaculture value chains are, however, marred by social and economic inequalities. Care must therefore be taken that aquaculture is undertaken sustainably and ethically, and considers impacts on broader ecosystems as well on human health and wellbeing (Bottema et al. 2021). Poor management practices, exploitative labour practices and poorly planned aquaculture intensification and expansion can negatively impact ecosystems (de Graaf and Xuan 1998). Equitable expansion of mariculture may benefit from association with global certification schemes that promote transparency compliance with labour rights, human rights and gender equity (Human Rights at Sea 2023). Lessons can be learned from past mistakes, as well as from Indigenous and traditional coastal communities.

Aquaculture operations must also be cognisant of climate-related risks, such as increasing temperatures and unpredictable weather (Oyinlola et al. 2018; Galappaththi et al. 2020; IPCC 2023). Climate and economic constraints suggest that mariculture growth, in particular, is unlikely to continue at the same rate in the future as it has in the past two decades (Oyinlola et al. 2018; Belton et al. 2020; Cheung et al. 2023).

Promoting consumption of molluscs and seaweed

Seaweed and molluscs have multiple advantages as food sources. They are some of the most sustainable and nutritious aquatic foods, they are commonly accessible to women and are amenable to both wild harvesting and low-input cultivation (Lau and Scales 2016; Gephart and Golden 2022). As noted in Section 1, these species contain high levels of key micronutrients commonly lacking in diets around the world (Golden et al. 2021b; Zamborain-Mason et al. 2023).

In their wild form, both seaweed and molluscs can be harvested with a small environmental footprint because they tend to be found close to shore, and therefore do not require fuel, feed or land (Gephart et al. 2021), in contrast to fed aquaculture like shrimp (Kauffman et al. 2017). Small-scale cultivation of these species has the additional benefit of being traditionally accessible to women, creating a direct link between these strategies and improved food and nutritional security (Lau and Scales 2016). They can also be part of important local ecosystem restoration activities, including MPAs and OECMs, and thus positive for both ocean and human health (Bayraktarov et al. 2016; Northrop et al. 2020).

Aquaculture of local species (e.g. molluscs and seaweed) is a strategy for avoiding over-harvesting in marine fisheries, while providing food from the ocean. Governmental support for mariculture, such as by facilitating new cultivation sites (Lake and Utting 2007), could be linked with educational campaigns that extol the nutritional and climate benefits of seaweed and molluscs and offer new recipes for dishes from these products. The goal is to help consumers understand that these are sustainable choices.

A further caveat is that currently seaweed and mollusc production do not necessarily provide good jobs. Despite the importance of seaweed and mollusc production as a source of food security, nutrition and livelihoods, the small-scale sector is consistently undervalued and overlooked in planning and development policies. Governmental intervention to support labour rights in mariculture operations will be essential.

Encouraging sustainable seafood consumption

Shifting meat-centric diets towards less resource-intensive foods that emphasise sustainable and nutritious seafood (e.g. cultivated molluscs), vegetables, fruits and legumes can help meet global climate goals and contribute to a sustainable food future (Hilborn et al. 2018; Searchinger et al. 2019; Crona et al. 2023; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2023). This increasing global demand for seafood must address sustainability, equity, resource allocation and the importance of food sovereignty for coastal communities, particularly in the Global South.

Reducing seafood loss and waste

One-third of ocean food is lost or wasted through value chains (FAO 2022). Waste reduction through full use of the marine catch, including bycatch, can increase fisheries’ sustainability and food security (Ajayi et al. 2023; UN 2023b). Supporting safe and clean conditions for fish processors and traders (particularly small-scale supply chain actors, who may experience poor conditions) can help reduce waste, increase food quantity and quality, and raise incomes (Nwazuo et al. 2016).

Global governance and multilateral institutions

The world’s multilateral organisations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), recognise that accelerating climate change, worsening pollution and wide-scale biodiversity loss pose major challenges to human health and wellbeing, societal sustainability and ocean health. These changes threaten both planetary health and economic development, and they have stymied global efforts to make any progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal of achieving zero hunger (SDG 2) (UN 2023b). Multilateral transboundary organisations and agreements are therefore taking steps to reform management of marine resources globally, including working with local communities and incorporating OECMs that provide effective protection (Gurney et al. 2021).

Reducing fishing subsidies

A very important reform was achieved when member states of the World Trade Organization agreed in 2022 to prohibit some fishing subsidies (Briley 2023). The WTO (2022) acknowledged that the $20 billion in annual fishery subsidies by national governments encourages and supports overfishing, particularly by more economically developed countries, and results in resource depletion, especially in less economically developed countries, with impacts on food security and hence health (Sumaila et al. 2019). This was only the second agreement on fishery subsidies ever reached by the WTO, requiring more than 20 years of negotiation, and thus highlighting the great difficulty in reaching consensus in multilateral forums (Johnson et al. 2023; Okonjo-Iweala 2023).

Regulating trade and assuring equitable finance to enhance food security

Recent successes have been achieved in brokering other international agreements in fisheries, such as the Agreement on Port State Measures and the High Seas Treaty (FAO n.d.; Stokstad 2023). There has also been movement towards reforming global financial and trading systems to provide more equitable access to marine resources (Villars Framework 2023). With these agreements successfully in place and effectively enforced, sustainability and equity can be advanced, and countries, especially those in the Global South, can meet both their developmental and climate targets (Persaud 2023; Villars Framework 2023) (see Case study 4).

Examples of reform of multilateral banks and international financial institutions include initiatives such as the New Global Financial Pact and the Bridgetown Initiative’s proposal of a large-scale stimulus package to invest in the Sustainable Development Goals, an effort which could bring more equitable access to affordable capital (UN 2023c). If properly implemented, these initiatives could unleash previously inaccessible investment and technologies into areas that are key to supporting food security and creating resilient economies in low- and middle-income countries.

Multilateral rules, including those put forth by the WTO, can promote equitable and fair outcomes in food security by

• redirecting finance towards investment in technologies that support sustainable production practices and efforts designed to meet global climate targets (Villars Framework 2023; Cheung et al. 2023);
• slowing the removal of highly nutritious aquatic foods from nations with high prevalence of malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies so that there is sufficient high-quality seafood to prevent malnutrition in low- and middle-income countries (Nash et al. 2022); and
• ensuring that trade works for low-income nations, through debt relief and through aligning trade with domestic food security policy (Villars Framework 2023) (see Case study 4).

CASE STUDY 4. Remaking trade rules for a sustainable ocean economy

The Remaking Global Trade for a Sustainable Future project seeks to re-gear the trade system to be more sustainable, inclusive and just (Villars Framework 2023). The project has identified tangible ways through which a reformed trade system can promote a more resilient and sustainable ocean economy that will enable all nations to support their development and finance needs.

NEW TRADE RULES TO REDUCE FISHERY SUBSIDIES

The new World Trade Organization (WTO) Fisheries Subsidies Agreement, negotiated at the 12th Ministerial Conference, focuses on eliminating only some (i.e. IUU) fishery subsidies, while overlooking the most harmful subsidies relating to overfishing. A new approach to subsidies regulation proposed at the WTO, the Villars Framework, which is consistent with but additional to the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement, would prohibit ‘harmful’ subsidies that do not promote sustainable outcomes while encouraging ‘helpful’ subsidies that promote sustainability. Such a new analytical framework combines the traditional WTO focus on the degree of trade distortion with a new focus on sustainability (Figure CS-4.1).

Under the Villars Framework, funds from harmful subsidies would be repurposed and allocated to a Global Trade Sustainability Fund. This fund would assist low- and middle-income countries in complying with obligations imposed by the new Fisheries Agreement, support domestic food security and cover other costs of transition (Villars Framework 2023).

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Cima and Esty n.d.

If these multilateral transboundary agreements are effectively enforced, sustainability and equity can be advanced. Countries, especially those in the Global South, will be able to develop sustainably, feed their populations and achieve climate targets (Persaud 2023; Villars Framework 2023).

International conventions on human rights

A human rights-based approach to the sustainable management of marine resources such as fisheries and aquaculture could do much to protect people’s access to sufficient and healthy food. Several core human rights treaties (including a treaty on the right to food: Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) and numerous treaties on the rights of workers (the same covenant’s Article 6) have been ratified by most countries but are routinely violated.

Upholding these rights in ocean spaces would eliminate the most egregious disparities by income, race, education and gender that affect access to food security and nutrition (HLPE 2023). Three strategies for upholding the rights enshrined in these treaties would require international organizations, governments and the private sector to

• understand and bolster marine tenure, discussed above (Cohen et al. forthcoming);
• recognise, protect and provide support for ocean defenders and Indigenous communities (Bennett et al. 2022); and
• legislate do-no-harm principles to guide international investments by transnational corporations involved in aquatic food production.

International, multi-stakeholder protocols to monitor corporations

By passing additional laws that build on successful human rights–based certification schemes, such as the Global Seafood Alliance Responsible Fishing Vessel Standard (Global Seafood Alliance 2022; Human Rights at Sea 2023), and applying these principles to actors invested in marine food production, governments could make it incumbent on transnational companies and others to provide evidence that they are not promoting labour abuse and undermining local food security in their fishing practices.

Such an approach could be modelled on the Kimberley Process (Howard 2015), an international certification programme designed to increase transparency and oversight in the diamond supply chain and eliminate trade in conflict diamonds. Such measures would have the additional benefit of contributing to the long-term conservation and sustainable use of marine resources and marine ecosystems.

Another example is the FAO (n.d.) Agreement on Port State Measures. This international treaty, which went into force in 2016, seeks to prevent, deter and eliminate IUU fishing. It is operationalised at the country level through national regulations that prevent foreign flag vessels engaged in IUU fishing from using ports and landing their catches. Through this mechanism, the Agreement on Port State Measures blocks foreign fishery products derived from IUU fishing from reaching national and international markets.

Improving fishery management

With nutrient composition data now widely available, examples of successful approaches to fisheries management (e.g. Cohen and Foale 2013; Hilborn et al. 2020; McClanahan 2021) can be identified and adapted to support a sustainable increase in the production of fish. For example, intensively managed fisheries across temperate latitudes that have already proved effective at rebuilding stocks and regulating sustainable fishing (Hilborn et al. 2020) could be adapted in other locales to maximise specific nutrients. Nutrient yield curves could be used to estimate the point (maximum nutrient yield) at which fishing for a specific nutrient is maximised, based on the relative contribution of nutritious species to total catch and their vulnerability to fishing (Robinson et al. 2022).

Elsewhere, species could be identified that are both resilient to the impacts of climate change and overfishing and rich in target nutrients such that they can help close population-level nutrient gaps (Mellin et al. 2022; Robinson et al. 2022). For example, small pelagic fish (e.g. Sardina pilchardus, Sardinella aurita, Sardinella madarensis) are both rich in nutrients lacking in some diets and have life-history characteristics enabling them to sustain higher levels of exploitation than other marine species (Golden et al. 2021a; Golden et al. 2021b; Robinson et al. 2022).

Nutrition-sensitive approaches to sustainable fishery management could help maximise the contribution of wild-caught fish to global food and nutrition security (SDGs 2, 3 and 14), particularly in countries where alternate sources of animal proteins are not accessible, if attention is given to identifying marginalised groups and supporting equity (Case study 5) (Grantham et al. 2022; Tilley et al. 2021; Allegretti and Hicks 2023).

Actions and opportunities

The ocean can produce enough food to feed all of humanity and contribute to ending food insecurity, but multiple challenges impede realisation of this potential. These challenges can be addressed through the following actions and opportunities.

Recognise and protect access to the health and wellbeing benefits the ocean provides to all of society. Sustainable use and management of marine food resources will require governance policies that are based on equity, protection of environmental health, human health and wellbeing for all people, and respect for traditional marine tenure regimes. This includes increasing the level of operationalised commitment to existing health, ocean and human rights instruments, particularly as new ocean opportunities are explored and pursued.

Support marine tenure for local communities and Indigenous Peoples. Marine tenure regimes of coastal communities and Indigenous Peoples ensure that cultural, livelihood and stewardship benefits continue, and can provide a mechanism to buffer populations against marine food insecurity. They need to be understood, bolstered and, when necessary, codified into law.

CASE STUDY 5. Nutrition-sensitive fisheries: An inclusive, nutrition-sensitive approach to fisheries management in Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste is a small island developing state (SIDS; also known as a ‘large ocean state’) in the Asia-Pacific region. Acute food insecurity, chronic malnutrition and low dietary diversity are widespread, and half of children under age five are chronically malnourished (Grantham et al. 2022). Fishing is the primary occupation in many coastal communities, and women are as involved in fishing as men (Tilley et al. 2021) (Figure CS-5.1). Yet per capita seafood consumption in Timor-Leste is far below that in other island nations, highlighting the potential for seafood to close significant dietary gaps.

PRINCIPLES FOR NUTRITION-SENSITIVE FISHERIES

A nutrition-sensitive approach to fisheries management should embed fisheries policy in the broader food and social security system; recognise multiple forms of knowledge, identities and vulnerabilities; and be oriented towards local needs (Allegretti and Hicks 2023).

Since 2013, WorldFish has been working in Timor-Leste to pilot a nutrition-sensitive approach to fisheries, under 11 core principles. These include the creation of nutrition and equity indicators and objectives and the co-design and coordination of policy and management systems across other sectors (health, environment, water, sanitation, education).

In conjunction with support for traditional fisheries management, this programme has now identified barriers to increased fish consumption among vulnerable groups. In response, it has developed new products that extend shelf life, extended supply chains inland to reach vulnerable populations and shared tips on preparing fish for children with 50 percent of households in Timor-Leste.

Photo credit:

©Dave Mills, 2016.

Uphold human rights. Human rights-based strategies can decrease the most egregious disparities in food security and nutrition related to income, race, education and gender. They include supporting marine tenure; protecting labour rights at sea, in mariculture and in seafood processing (Selig et al. 2022); recognising, protecting and supporting the heroic women and men who defend them, often unrecognised, unsung ‘ocean defenders’; and legislating principles of do-no-harm to guide international investments and transnational corporations involved in aquatic food production practices.

Reform global finance and trade. Build on recent multilateral successes (e.g. the new UN High Seas Treaty and the WTO agreement) to phase out harmful fisheries subsidies. These efforts should redirect finance to support investment in technologies that support sustainable production practices and efforts to meet global climate targets; slow the removal of nutritious aquatic foods from nations with a high prevalence of deficiencies; and ensure that trade works for low-income nations, through debt relief and aligning trade with domestic food security policy. These efforts could target other subsidies that lead to overfishing and overcapacity but remain in place.

Support seaweed and mollusc cultivation and harvest. Seaweed and molluscs, some of the most sustainable and nutritious sources of aquatic foods, are commonly accessible to women and amenable to both wild harvesting and low-input cultivation. Moreover, they require extremely low energy inputs. Supporting the development of these sectors could reduce pressure on wild fisheries while supporting food security, enhancing gender equality, reducing malnutrition and poverty, and boosting local economies in low- and middle-income countries. A further benefit of seaweed and mollusc cultivation is their contribution to climate mitigation through carbon capture (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2023).

Efficient and effective support of mariculture requires area-based approaches (e.g. OECMs) that consider entire coastal ecosystems and use collaborative approaches to shared risk management with local communities. Equitable expansion of mariculture will require governance reforms that support small-scale fishers and farmers and uphold labour rights. It will also require the application of a global certification scheme that increases transparency and assures compliance with respect to human rights and gender equity.

Promote the health benefits of seafood consumption with attention to distribution, equity and sustainability issues, particularly for coastal populations in LMICs. Such campaigns could be modelled on the experience of countries like Indonesia that have policies in place to encourage sustainable seafood consumption.

Develop nutrition-sensitive fishery management approaches. With nutrient composition data for fish species now widely available, successful approaches to fishery management could be identified or adapted to support a sustainable increase in the production of fish rich in target nutrients to help close nutrient gaps and maximise the contributions of wild-caught fish to global food and nutrition security.

Embed local aquatic food procurement in early and emergency interventions. Efforts to scale up the use of local aquatic foods in direct, early and emergency, food security and nutrition intervention programmes can address immediate food security needs while creating lasting coping strategies to combat both malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency. These programmes are most effective when they are based on local procurement strategies and coupled with healthy preparation, eating education, awareness and skills-training programmes. Such efforts have the potential to increase domestic consumption of seafood in low-income countries and can also generate local income.