The Role of Fishery and Aquaculture Innovations in Enhancing Global Food Security

Global food security is threatened by population growth, climate variability, degradation of resources, and limited inputs. Fisheries and aquaculture systems are key parts of the solution, providing accessible, highly bioavailable proteins and micronutrients to at-risk people globally, as well as other benefits. This paper reviews the potential of new technological and management interventions to increase global aquatic food security resilience to challenges to the system from new threats. These include Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS), genetic and selection programs, cellular aquaculture, precision fisheries analysis, and functional feed formulations. These interventions can increase efficiency by up to 35% improvement in FCR, survival, and production stability to climate change and limited input conditions. Trade-offs with the environment, from use of water, discharge to, interaction with, and other impacts are compared with Macro-economic effects of cost-benefit, access and job creation, and governance mechanisms, policy coordination, and infrastructure required to allow small-scale and industrial producers to share in benefits. Modeling long-term global supply indicates that an innovation intensification path is possible, producing more than 50% increase compared with the trend by 2045 to combat projected protein deficits. A strategy matrix to align policy and investments to achieve renewable-powered infrastructure and inclusive governance to support rapid blue transformation is recommended for policymakers.