The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded an Oregon State University (OSU) researcher USD 1.4 million (EUR 1.3 million) over three years to predict how fish stocks could shift due to climate change, specifically focusing on movements that have the potential to cause geopolitical tension.
The research aims to support world leaders in reducing the risk of future conflicts and, if tensions do rise, enhancing global preparedness for such instances.
Climate change already impacts and is likely to continue altering the biophysical characteristics of global oceans by affecting water temperatures, pH levels, and the direction of currents, among other changes. These shifts reshape the distribution of harvestable fish species, and fishers respond by altering their patterns to mirror those movements.
Therefore, disputes or general contention regarding access to shifting stocks will be the main focus of OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences Associate Professor James Watson, who is leading the research.
“Understanding how ocean conditions are going to change, where the fish are going to move, where fishing is going to shift, and then whether different nations have a history of conflict over fisheries ... allows us to start imagining future scenarios where things go well and where things don’t go well in terms of nations cooperating over access to these shifting fish stocks,” Watson said.
The DoD, a branch of the United States government responsible for national security, awarded this grant as one of 11, amounting to USD 18 million (EUR 16 million) in total funding.
“We live in a dynamic world, and many of the challenges we face are social or have social elements to them,” Secretary of Defense Office for Research and Engineering (R&E) Director of Social Science David Montgomery said in a recent press release. “Leveraging the strengths of the nation’s academic research institutions helps the DoD define sources of present and future conflicts, with an eye toward better understanding the social and political trajectories of key regions of the world.”
Watson and his team aim to explain why nations engage in conflict over shifting resources to improve anticipation and preparedness in the face of climate change; provide predictions for the movement of crucial species, such as pollock and bluefin tuna; identify specific actors and nations that may lose or gain access to stocks in an attempt to facilitate early dialogue; and integrate economists into the discussions regarding the valuation of natural resources.
“U.S. gross domestic product should include the value of our natural assets, and it should go down if we misuse those natural assets,” Watson said. “Working on the math and economics allows us to better value our nature so that we can then preserve and maintain that value to not see it just diminish immediately.”
The research will concentrate on fishing zones where conflicts have arisen in the past, such as the Arctic, Bering, and Chukchi seas.
The Cod Wars that began in the late 1950s through the ‘70s between Iceland and the U.K. is a well-known example in the region where two countries entered into armed conflict over fisheries activity, which contributed to the creation of international standard 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs). Watson noted that these conflicts occurred before the influence of climate change, which will only further heighten tensions and stress existing policies by testing their effectiveness in real-time.
“There is a political theory behind this conflict – the idea that large-scale geopolitics is sensitive to what happens at the small scales. Two fishermen – one from one country and one from another – might seem insignificant on the grand geopolitical landscape. But, their actions might happen at the wrong place at the wrong time, such that it creates a cascade of consequences that then lead to very bad outcomes,” Watson said.
The Cod Wars exemplify how nations, in most cases, engage in conflict over access to fisheries primarily for the provision of income, not food supply. Watson emphasized that these conflicts prompt larger conversations about measuring the economic value of fish stocks and, in general, natural assets, making the goal of including economists in these discussions all the more necessary.
“That’s wrapped into this project – to essentially allow us to understand the impact of another nation’s actions on the value we might receive from a fish stock, and that is sort of a crucial part of the equation to understanding if conflict might arise in the future,” Watson said.
The Arctic regions where the Cod Wars took place are currently experiencing sea ice declination, which has opened new fishing areas and habitats for marine animals. While the Arctic is currently off limits to fishing, Watson believes the ban is most likely temporary, so formulating policies that would mitigate the effects of the ban being lifted in advance is crucial.
“New access to a whole new ocean – you can easily imagine how that might go wrong. But, it also might go well if we can think about it early and construct forward-looking, proactive, and cooperative policies for the Arctic sea,” Watson said.
The U.S. and Russia are already exploring the possibilities surrounding the initiation of commercial fisheries in the Arctic, driven by the northward movement of fish stocks due to climate change.
Zooming out to other global areas, research published in 2022 by Global Change Biology predicts that by 2030, 23 percent of transboundary fish stocks will shift, resulting in 78 percent of the world’s EEZs likely to experience at least one shifting stock.
“Island nation states [such as] Japan and China have access to migratory species with already several policies in place allowing these nations to coordinate their access, but as climate change continues and the characteristics of the oceans change, these migratory highways are going to shift. As a consequence, policies need to be updated, too,” Watson said.
While there are models predicting climate change impacts, it is difficult to determine the exact downstream effects it will have. Watson explained that it’s not as beneficial to select a singular climate change scenario but, instead, to look at a full range of scenarios, in which the scientific community has a rigorous standard to explore its uncertainties.
“The goal of the project is to come up with plausible scenarios that help stakeholders practice mentally or through simulation what and how they would respond to such a scenario. That’s part of building resilience to these climate outcomes; should they happen, you can be prepared for them,” Watson said.
The project will prioritize research publication and will also hold workshops and open venues for stakeholders and scientists to connect directly with the work. Entities that engage in environmental security, such as the U.S. Coast Guard, Navy, NOAA, and fisheries stakeholders from fishers to seafood companies are encouraged to participate.
Photo courtesy of Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock
