changing rainfall patterns brought about by climate change. We face further risks to food supply because of the potential collapse of fisheries both through overfishing and through broader damage to ocean ecosystems. Billions of people face increasingly urgent issues about access to fresh and clean water, both for everyday consumption and to supply industrial and agricultural processes. These and many other issues will have a direct impact on economic growth, on geopolitical and domestic security, and on our quality of life. The flow on effects of any one of these trends, let alone a number of them in combination, will be dramatic. It is important to emphasize this pointâthat environmental damage means economic lossâbecause many still donât fully accept the connection.
With fisheries, for example, the science suggests that with our current growth trajectory all global fisheries are on the path to collapseâindeed 30 percent of them already have. A study published in Science in 2009 concluded that every type of fish currently consumed by people will have collapsed by 2048, defined as catches having dropped by 90 percent. When they say collapsed, they mean just thatâthe end of the fishing industry. With five hundred million people 9 in families that depend upon the direct and indirect income of fisheries and around one billion people relying on fish as their prime source of animal protein, the economic and social implications of collapse are profound, as the MEA demonstrates. Weâre already feeling the impact, with a World Bank study of 2008 finding that overfishing was already costing the industry $50 billion a year. 10
We can get an idea of what this would look like by considering the smaller case study of the collapse of the Newfoundland cod in Canadian waters in the early 1990s due to overfishing. In a haunting example of sudden, nonlinear change, the catch size dropped from hundreds of thousands of tons a year to close to zero in the space of just a few years, despite a failed last-minute attempt to save the stock through the imposition of catch quotas. Along with the loss of a valuable industry, the collapse led to the loss of thirty thousand jobs and a cost to taxpayers of $2 billion in income support and retraining. If sustainable fishing had been practiced instead, the industry would today be worth $900 million a year.
Aquaculture is often proposed as a solution to declining catches. While aquaculture has theoretical potential, current practices suggest that the ecosystem economics is questionable there as well. Farmed fish species such as salmon and tuna have to be fed many times their body weight in wild fish meal, increasing inefficiency and diverting cheap fish protein catches away from local populations. The loss of ecosystem services in establishing aquaculture farms can also be huge. A 2001 study of mangroves in Thailand referenced by the MEA found that protecting mangroves and their existing uses returned between $1,000 and $36,000 per hectare, whereas conversion to shrimp farming returned just $200 per hectare.
When thinking of water systems and economics, we often gravitate toward the oceans, but inland water systems are tremendously important as well, and under particular strain. An estimated 50 percent of them were lost in the twentieth century. Even after this loss, the ecosystem services provided by inland water systems have been estimated at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion annually. As an example of direct human losses following environmental change, we need look no further than the Aral Sea, an inland sea and one of the worldâs four largest lakes, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Severe overirrigation originating in the Soviet era literally drained the once massive lake, so that by 2007 it had been reduced to 10 percent of its former size. Around thirty-five million people were dependent upon the lake for water, fish, and transportâservices it no
With fisheries, for example, the science suggests that with our current growth trajectory all global fisheries are on the path to collapseâindeed 30 percent of them already have. A study published in Science in 2009 concluded that every type of fish currently consumed by people will have collapsed by 2048, defined as catches having dropped by 90 percent. When they say collapsed, they mean just thatâthe end of the fishing industry. With five hundred million people 9 in families that depend upon the direct and indirect income of fisheries and around one billion people relying on fish as their prime source of animal protein, the economic and social implications of collapse are profound, as the MEA demonstrates. Weâre already feeling the impact, with a World Bank study of 2008 finding that overfishing was already costing the industry $50 billion a year. 10
We can get an idea of what this would look like by considering the smaller case study of the collapse of the Newfoundland cod in Canadian waters in the early 1990s due to overfishing. In a haunting example of sudden, nonlinear change, the catch size dropped from hundreds of thousands of tons a year to close to zero in the space of just a few years, despite a failed last-minute attempt to save the stock through the imposition of catch quotas. Along with the loss of a valuable industry, the collapse led to the loss of thirty thousand jobs and a cost to taxpayers of $2 billion in income support and retraining. If sustainable fishing had been practiced instead, the industry would today be worth $900 million a year.
Aquaculture is often proposed as a solution to declining catches. While aquaculture has theoretical potential, current practices suggest that the ecosystem economics is questionable there as well. Farmed fish species such as salmon and tuna have to be fed many times their body weight in wild fish meal, increasing inefficiency and diverting cheap fish protein catches away from local populations. The loss of ecosystem services in establishing aquaculture farms can also be huge. A 2001 study of mangroves in Thailand referenced by the MEA found that protecting mangroves and their existing uses returned between $1,000 and $36,000 per hectare, whereas conversion to shrimp farming returned just $200 per hectare.
When thinking of water systems and economics, we often gravitate toward the oceans, but inland water systems are tremendously important as well, and under particular strain. An estimated 50 percent of them were lost in the twentieth century. Even after this loss, the ecosystem services provided by inland water systems have been estimated at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion annually. As an example of direct human losses following environmental change, we need look no further than the Aral Sea, an inland sea and one of the worldâs four largest lakes, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Severe overirrigation originating in the Soviet era literally drained the once massive lake, so that by 2007 it had been reduced to 10 percent of its former size. Around thirty-five million people were dependent upon the lake for water, fish, and transportâservices it no
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