General Guidelines for risk assessments

Climate change significantly affects the biology and ecology of several marine fish stocks and aquaculture species, and is likely to affect the productivity within seafood supply chains in the coming years, as climate scientists predict further warming in the decades to come. To maximise the potential of European seafood production under future climate scenarios and minimize undesirable shocks and negative effects due to climate change, efficient and precautionary management along with forward-minded decision-making on all levels is crucial. By creating ready-to-go adaptive strategies to cope with future climate change that are tailor-made not only for each specific sector, but for each component of a production system (specific industry or farm), managers, operators and other stakeholders can strategically reduce negative effects of climate change on their future production, while finding effective ways to utilize all potential opportunities that may arise.

The D5.6 in ClimeFish contains the first draft of general guidelines for making adaptive management plans or Climate Adaptation Plans (CAPs) for three different seafood production sectors: marine capture fisheries, marine aquaculture and freshwater lake and pond production. While these guidelines are based on a CAP development process within specific case studies in the ClimeFish project, the guidelines have been designed and set up to also enable other users, regions and areas not covered by the ClimeFish project to develop their own CAPs.

These general guidelines are now to be applied in eight case studies within the ClimeFish project, where relevant stakeholders will participate in developing CAPs and the likely effects of their implementation will be simulated. Following the results of that work, the general guidelines will be amended and adjusted. Consequently, and as outlined in the project description, these guidelines will be updated and improved at later stages in the ClimeFish project.

You can find whole description here soon.