Dr. Rashid Sumaila, Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, presented his research at Oceans Day in Durban, South Africa, on December 3, 2011. His presentation, titled Climate Change Impacts on the Biophysics and Economics of World Fisheries, was part of a session that highlighted the linkages between climate change and food security for African communities.

“It was a great opportunity for different stakeholders to talk to each other,” Dr. Sumaila said of the event.

The third Oceans Day was organized as part of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17).

FERU Director Rashid Sumaila will be presenting his analysis of the ecological and economic deficits of nations at the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC. Linking data from the Global Footprint Network (http://www.footprintnetwork.org) and the International Monetary Fund, Dr. Sumalia will provide data and analysis about ecological and economic deficits and reveal a simple “ecolonomic index” to rank the performance of nations around the world. Ecological and Financial Deficits: A Double Whammy for Future Generations will be delivered as part the session titled Whole-Ocean Economics: Global Fisheries Analysis Potential for Policy Action.

FERU Director Rashid Sumaila will be one of the speakers at the World Oceans Summit held in Singapore on 22-24 February, 2012. For more information,visit the World Oceans Summit website.

As has been noted in several publications by the Fisheries Economics Research Unit (FERU), subsidies are a very important issue in world fisheries. Spain’s fishing fleets are no exception, as has been recently investigated by Kate Willson, Mar Cabra and Marcos Garcia Rey of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The authors undertook an in-depth analysis of the Spanish fishing industry and have found that subsidies received from the European Union and Spanish governments have totaled € 5.8 billion since 2000.

On an annual basis, the authors found that one in three fish is…

Negotiators at the Kobe III meetings in La Jolla California, who collectively manage tuna fisheries in more than 91% of the world’s oceans, are being presented with a bleak picture from several recent studies.

Bruce Collette and his colleagues at the National Marine Fisheries Service Systematics Laboratory in Washington DC, conducted the first global assessment of scombrids and billfish, families that include important commercial species such as tuna, marlin and mackerel, to produce a “red list” of species according to the criteria developed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  Their work find that 7…

In recognition of World Oceans Day June 8th, the UN held a panel discussion entitled “Our oceans: greening our future” in New York.  Participating in the event, The Fisheries Centre’s very own Rashid Sumaila spoke on the economic challenges facing global fisheries and on the finite nature of the ocean’s resources.  Drawing on Adam Smith for inspiration Dr. Sumaila began with the quote:

“The earth and the fullness of it belongs to every generation and the preceding one can have no right to blind it up from posterity.”

Dr. Sumaila also emphasized the links between our economy and the…

Rashid Sumaila, head of the Fisheries Economic Unit here at UBC, was interviewed Tuesday by WorldScience on the state of world fisheries and the role consumers can play in bringing sustainability to our fisheries.  The interview can listened to here.  Rashid will also be taking questions through Dec. 2.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

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Co-produced by the BBC World Service, Public Radio Internation and WGBH, The World is a daily international news magazine broadcast on public radio stations across the US.

Members of the Fisheries Economics Unit at the UBC fisheries centre are pleased with favourable reviews for their paper “Food security implications of global marine catch losses due to overfishing” published last year in the Journal of Bioeconomics.  While the cost of overfishing on marine biodiversity and ecology has been emphasized in recent literature, this work introduces the human cost of overfishing and estimates that 20 million people in the developing world are undernourished as a result of unsustainable fishing.  As noted by Emmett Duffy:

 

“This paper shows that global overfishing results not only in the well-known

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The End of the Line, the first major documentary to focus public attention on the consequences and extent of overfishing, is now “making waves” outside of the movie theatre, inspiring tv shows like Hugh’s Fish Fight, shaming restaurant owners into changing their menus and drawing wider media attention to the issue according to a recent article in the Guardian.

While “The End of the Line” only attracted 10,000 people to theatres when it was originally released, the film has since emerged as a centrepiece of efforts to bring sustainability to world fisheries.  Supermarkets such…

Members of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit attended the annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington D.C Friday.  With Rashid Sumaila as organizer, Daniel Pauly as moderator and fisheries economists Andrew Dyck and Vicky Lam presenting, members of the Fisheries Centre and their research were well represented at this year’s symposium, leading up to next year’s symposium to be held here at UBC.

Presentations at this year’s symposium emphasized the linkages between the physical, ecological, and socioeconomic systems upon which fisheries depend, and the growing consensus that addressing climate change requires…