Aquaculture research and management in the telecoupled Belt and Road Initiative countries and beyond
Abstract
Due to the continuous growth in aquatic product consumption, globally the total production of aquatic products has increased by 20% in the past two decades. In 2014, for the first time, the production of aquatic products for direct human consumption from aquaculture surpassed that of wild catch. In 2016, the total production of global aquatic products reached 170 million tons, of which 45% comes from the aquaculture sector. More importantly, over 80% of the global aquaculture production occurs in the Belt and Road Initiative countries. Particularly, China alone contributes to two third of the global share. The rapid expansion and intensification of aquaculture have many environmental and socioeconomic impacts both at the cultivation places and also in places where feed is produced; however, these telecoupled processes and effects are largely unknown in a quantitative manner. Here, we apply the telecoupling framework to analyze the aquaculture trade among China and other Belt and Road Initiative countries and beyond. The integrated telecoupling framework helps to demonstrate the environmental and socioeconomic interactions among the feed (and aquatic product) sending, receiving, and spillover systems. It also provides a platform to model the telecoupled processes and effects across multiple remotely connected systems. Moreover, the application of the framework reveals many research gaps and management needs on aquaculture research and management.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMGC13B0775Y
- Keywords:
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- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4322 Health impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS