Why Climate Change and State Subsidies Will Collide to Create Fishery Conflict

Abstract

Climate change, combined with rising global demand for seafood products, will lead to greater conflict over remaining fisheries. Warming and acidifying oceans are shifting the availability of oxygen and nutrients that are necessary to maintain fish stocks. These changes are likely to increase conflict, both interstate and intrastate, in several important ways. For one, the fish stocks that are already under stress from demand for seafood protein are also shifting location. Most significantly, scarcity will likely draw in greater state involvement in fisheries. As traditional fleets exhaust their territorial waters, domestic political pressure will lead to greater state investment in distant water fishing (DWF) fleets to access fish stocks on the high seas and in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of other states. DWF fleets are destabilizing because they can easily access fishing zones with low levels of enforcement. Their industrial scale and low level of transparency means that they are also more likely to engage in Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing activities. States are also more likely to intervene militarily to protect their state-support DWF fleets.