Rosamond L. Naylor's research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

Blue food systems are crucial for meeting global social and environmental goals. Both small-scale marine fisheries (SSFs) and aquaculture contribute to these goals, with SSFs supporting hundreds of millions of people and aquaculture currently expanding in the marine environment. Here we examine the interactions between SSFs and aquaculture, and the possible combined benefits and trade-offs of these interactions, along three pathways: (1) resource access and rights allocation; (2) markets and supply chains; and (3) exposure to and management of risks. Analysis of 46 diverse case studies showcase positive and negative interaction outcomes, often through competition for space or in the marketplace, which are context-dependent and determined by multiple factors, as further corroborated by qualitative modeling. Results of our mixed methods approach underscore the need to anticipate and manage interactions between SSFs and aquaculture deliberately to avoid negative socio-economic and environmental outcomes, promote synergies to enhance food production and other benefits, and ensure equitable benefit distribution.

Global aquatic or ‘blue’ foods, essential to over 3.2 billion people, face challenges of maintaining supply in a changing environment while adhering to safety and sustainability standards. Despite the growing concerns over their environmental impacts, limited attention has been paid to how blue food production is influenced by anthropogenic environmental changes. Here we assess the vulnerability of global blue food systems to predominant environmental disturbances and predict the spatial impacts. Over 90% of global blue food production faces substantial risks from environmental change, with the major producers in Asia and the United States facing the greatest threats. Capture fisheries generally demonstrate higher vulnerability than aquaculture in marine environments, while the opposite is true in freshwater environments. While threats to production quantity are widespread across marine and inland systems, food safety risks are concentrated within a few countries. Identifying and supporting mitigation and adaptation measures in response to environmental stressors is particularly important in developing countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa where risks are high and national response capacities are low. These findings lay groundwork for future work to map environmental threats and opportunities, aiding strategic planning and policy development for resilient and sustainable blue food production under changing conditions.

Aquaculture is among the most dynamic sectors in the global food system, yet it remains surprisingly under-represented in the mainstream literature on food policy. This article reviews 204 published articles and reports and shows that government policies have strongly influenced the geographic distribution of aquaculture growth, as well as the types of species, technology, management practices, and infrastructure adopted in different locations. Global cross-section studies reveal a broad spectrum of under- to over-regulated aquaculture systems that correspond, respectively, to high- and low-growth areas for aquaculture. The bulk of this paper centers on aquaculture policy as it plays out six individual countries plus the EU: Bangladesh, Zambia, Chile, China, USA, and Norway. These case studies shed light on aquaculture policies aimed at economic development, aquaculture disease management, siting, environmental performance, and trade protection. Experiences from these countries point to the need to find the right policy balance between semi-subsistence farms, small and medium enterprises (SME), and large-scale commercial operations, particularly in low-income settings. The cases also highlight the importance of addressing aquaculture disease pressures and misuse of antimicrobials in many parts of the world, and identifying successful aquaculture policy instruments and institutions that can be transferred between countries. The review underscores the challenges of establishing nutrition-sensitive aquaculture policies and of incorporating aquaculture directly into food policy and global food system dialogues and action.

Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich¹, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats², and contribute to the health³, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities⁴. The Blue Food Assessment recently evaluated nutritional, environmental, economic and justice dimensions of blue foods globally. Here we integrate these findings and translate them into four policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate. To account for how context-specific environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects affect this contribution, we assess the relevance of each policy objective for individual countries, and examine associated co-benefits and trade-offs at national and international scales. We find that in many African and South American nations, facilitating consumption of culturally relevant blue food, especially among nutritionally vulnerable population segments, could address vitamin B12 and omega-3 deficiencies. Meanwhile, in many global North nations, cardiovascular disease rates and large greenhouse gas footprints from ruminant meat intake could be lowered through moderate consumption of seafood with low environmental impact. The analytical framework we provide also identifies countries with high future risk, for whom climate adaptation of blue food systems will be particularly important. Overall the framework helps decision makers to assess the blue food policy objectives most relevant to their geographies, and to compare and contrast the benefits and trade-offs associated with pursuing these objectives.

Aquatic foods are among the most highly traded foods, with nearly 60 million tonnes exported in 2020, representing 11% of global agriculture trade by value 1. Despite the vast scale, basic characteristics of aquatic food trade, including the species, origin, and farmed versus wild sourcing, are largely unknown due to fundamental mismatches between production and trade data. Without detailed trade data, we have only a coarse picture of aquatic food consumption patterns 2. Here, we present a global database of species trade flows and compute consumption for all farmed and wild, marine and freshwater aquatic foods from 1996-2020. The database consists of over 2400 species/species groups, 193 countries, and over 35 million bilateral records. We show that aquatic foods have become increasingly globalized, with the share of production exported increasing by 40% since 1996. However, trends differ across aquatic food sectors, with marine capture fisheries remaining the most highly globalized group despite stagnating production. We find intraregional trade is generally greater than interregional trade, particularly for aquaculture. We also show that global consumption increased 26% despite declining marine capture consumption. Reliance on foreign-sourced aquatic foods increased globally but reliance ranges from 9% foreign product consumption in Asia to 65% in Europe. Finally, although the diversity of domestic-sourced consumption is typically higher than that of foreign-sourced consumption, overall aquatic food consumption diversity is positively associated with trade. As we As we look for sustainable diet opportunities among aquatic foods, our findings and underlying database link consumption to producing environments across the diversity of aquatic foods and enable greater monitoring of the role of trade in rapidly evolving aquatic food systems. Thus, the higher resolution provides important insights for sustainable sourcing and how aquatic food trade adds to food resilience.

Blue foods play a central role in food and nutrition security for billions of people and are a cornerstone of the livelihoods, economies, and cultures of many coastal and riparian communities. Blue foods are extraordinarily diverse, are often rich in essential micronutrients and fatty acids, and can be produced in ways that are more environmentally sustainable than terrestrial animal-source foods. Yet, despite their unique value, blue foods have often been left out of food system analyses, discussions and solutions. Here, we focus on three imperatives for realizing the potential of blue foods: (1) Bring blue foods into the heart of food system decision-making; (2) Protect and develop the potential of blue foods to help end malnutrition; and (3) Support the central role of small-scale actors in fisheries and aquaculture.

The recent rapid growth in aquaculture production reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization may have inadvertently generated what we denote here as aquaculture over-optimism. An extreme form of this is the notion that we need not worry about sustaining wild fish stocks because we can meet the global need through farming. Here we investigate whether the recent growth in aquaculture production can be maintained, and we compare aquaculture production projections with the future need for fish to find out whether aquaculture over-optimism can be justified. We show relevant evidence suggesting that aquaculture growth rates in all the cases studied have already reached their peak and have begun declining. Also, our results indicate that without wild fish, the world will face a fish food shortage of about 71 million tonnes annually by 2030, and the aquaculture production growth rate would have to be 3 times current average projected production by the FAO, the World Bank and the OECD in 2030. Finally, the current geographical distribution of farmed fish production suggests that even if aquaculture over-optimism is physically, economically, technically and ecologically feasible, its socio-economic cost to low-income coastal countries could be devastating.

Injustices are prevalent in food systems, where the accumulation of vast wealth is possible for a few, yet one in ten people remain hungry. Here, for 194 countries we combine aquatic food production, distribution and consumption data with corresponding national policy documents and, drawing on theories of social justice, explore whether barriers to participation explain unequal distributions of benefits. Using Bayesian models, we find economic and political barriers are associated with lower wealth-based benefits; countries produce and consume less when wealth, formal education and voice and accountability are lacking. In contrast, social barriers are associated with lower welfare-based benefits; aquatic foods are less affordable where gender inequality is greater. Our analyses of policy documents reveal a frequent failure to address political and gender-based barriers. However, policies linked to more just food system outcomes centre principles of human rights, specify inclusive decision-making processes and identify and challenge drivers of injustice.