Feeding our growing population

by Dr Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director, IFFO

This month I am writing my column whilst attending the FAO’s International Symposium on Fisheries Sustainability in Rome.

The focus of the symposium is “Strengthening the Science-Policy Nexus” and it runs over four days at the FAO Headquarters building.  With over 700 delegates from around the world, there are many involved directly with fisheries industry, policy, management, and science in attendance. The format for the event has been a series of keynote presentations leading a panel discussion and a Q&A session with the audience.
 

A common theme underpinning all the presentations and the discussions has been reference to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and particularly SDG14, Life Below Water.  Understandably, the aims of the SDGs are highly visible with the FAO, but it is interesting to see how much they are being woven increasingly into government strategies and scientific objectives. I know that many of the marine ingredient producers and the aquafeed companies are also aligning their work to the SDGs, recognising their importance to business sustainability.

The major message coming from the event relates to the importance of fisheries and aquaculture in providing aquatic food for the future growing human population. As we all know, working in the industry, aquatic protein is the most efficient to produce and this can be done with relative reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in a way that can support the mitigation of climate change impacts.

This is an immensely important message in this time when we are being inundated with media reports of the effects of global temperatures rising and the imperative to maintain that increase as low as may be possible. That link between producing more food from aquatic systems and relative decreases in climate change impact risk is strengthening over time, but there were other secondary and important messages also coming through in the event.

Read more, HERE.

The Aquaculturists

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