아프리카ㆍ중동

A decades-long decline in stocks of small, sardine-like pelagic fish is threatening the livelihoods of more than 100,000 fishers along Ghana’s coast, plus nearly 2 million more people who earn their income from processing, transporting, and marketing this traditional fish catch. Shrinking fish stocks also imperil Ghana’s food security. Fish and seafood supply some 60 percent of the animal protein in Ghanaians’ diet. Overfishing is usually the most obvious explanation for a decline in fish stocks, but in this case, it is only part of the story. Even if this fishery were better managed, the local stocks would not be able to recover, due to the warming of offshore ocean waters driven by climate change. Communities that now depend on fishing will soon need help transitioning to alternative livelihoods. Ghanaian authorities are fully aware of this crisis. In a 2023 public speech, Ghana’s minister of fisheries and aquaculture development, Mavis Hawa Koomson, acknowledged that annual landings of some small pelagic fish had fallen to less than 10 percent of their 1992 level. She correctly attributed this crisis to a trio of causes: “climate change, Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) fishing, [and] excessive fishing capacity.” Then she laid out a list of official policy responses to help fishers, including continuing premix fuel subsidies for their motorized canoes and providing them with outboard motors and fish storage freezers. Such measures may support fishing communities in the short run, but they will only encourage more fishing, hastening the collapse of fish stocks. Ocean warming has made this collapse virtually impossible to avoid.