Funding coastal and marine fisheries projects under the climate change regime

Abstract

The oceans and fisheries are strongly impacted by climate change and acidification, and will increasingly be so. Four multilateral funds have been created under the climate change regime in order to support developing countries’ adaptation. These funds finance a number of projects mostly or partly related to marine and coastal fisheries. They include measures of a structural nature meant to modify laws, policies or strategies and to improve one’s understanding of climate change impacts on fisheries; measures to improve fish stocks’ resilience to climate change, by reducing harvesting and ecosystem-related stressors; and measures to improve fishing communities’ resilience in terms of food security and livelihoods. A majority of the marine fisheries projects focuses on the countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on marine fisheries. However, many vulnerable countries still do not receive financial support for adaptation in the marine fisheries sector. The four multilateral funds operate with insufficient and unequal levels of transparency regarding several stages of projects’ cycles; this raises issues of efficiency and accountability. The four funds also do not provide a harmonized and searchable marker dedicated to fisheries; this lack of transparency makes it impossible for the international community to comprehensively monitor progress in the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals 13 and 14. In any case, the existence of adaptation projects focused on coastal and marine fisheries may serve to promote the mainstreaming of ocean-related questions into the climate change regime.