Assessing and Operationalizing Climate Resilience in Marine Fisheries.

Mills, Katherine E.¹, K. M. Kleisner², Patrick J. Sullivan³, J. Mason², K. Tokunaga¹, ¹Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Portland, ME, ²Environmental Defense Fund, Boston, MA, ³Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Marine fisheries provide income, jobs, and nutrition for millions of people, but impacts of climate change are altering the productivity and distribution of fish stocks and the flows of benefits from fisheries. The nature of these impacts and ability of fishery stakeholders to respond to them are mediated by the ecological, socio-economic, and governance context within which fisheries operate. A recent SNAPP [Science for Nature and People Partnership] working group on Climate Resilient Fisheries has developed a framework and toolkit to support integrated assessments and planning for climate resilience in marine fisheries. This framework helps identify climate risks to a fishery; evaluate ecological, socioeconomic, and governance attributes that influence resilience; and prioritize actions to enhance climate resilience. By considering fisheries as coupled social-ecological systems, this integrated assessment and planning framework can help identify approaches to operationalize climate resilience within multiple dimensions of fishery systems. Applications to resilience assessment and planning will be demonstrated through case examples drawn from fisheries around the world, including New England.