HLPF side event 'One food system integrating terrestrial and aquatic food systems', Part Two: Barriers and Opportunities – Discussing why scaling sustainable solutions is[...]

Question: We have committed ourselves to end poverty and hunger, ensuring food security, healthy lives and wellbeing, to reduce food loss and waste, take climate action, protecting life below water, life on land and more. Aquaculture may be important key to achieving many of these goals. How can we move forward to scale up the good solutions, ensuring that the right actions are taken, to reach our common goals?

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

1. Aquatic foods are vital in the battle against hunger and malnutrition, offering substantial nutritional and environmental benefits. They have lower carbon and environmental footprint compared to most land-based animal production systems, and a high food-to-flesh conversion efficiency. Fisheries and aquaculture also support the livelihoods of more than 600 million people globally, the large majority in the global south.
2. Since 1961 aquatic animal foods consumption has grown at twice the rate of population growth, fueled by the rapid rise in aquaculture, which has been the fastest-growing food production system of the last two decades.
3. Remarkably, in 2022 aquaculture surpassed capture fisheries as the main producer of aquatic animals for the first time. Global aquaculture production reached an unprecedented 130.9 million tonnes, of which 94.4 million tonnes are aquatic animals, 51 percent of the total aquatic animal production.
4. A small number of countries dominate aquaculture, with the top ten country producers accounting for 90 percent of the total production. Many low-income countries in Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and Asia are not fully harnessing their potential in this sector.
5. To address this, targeted policies, technology transfer, capacity building and responsible investment are crucial to enhance sustainable aquaculture production where it is most needed.
6. Aquaculture can play a greater role in the fight against hunger and poverty, but its sustainability must be secured. Last week, FAO Members endorsed the new FAO Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture (GSA), offering a robust normative framework to guide global aquaculture activities towards environmental, economic, and social sustainability. The GSA promotes good practices such as science-based decision-making, knowledge sharing, technological innovation, within an ecosystem approach that considers the environment, the farmed organism and all stakeholders involved.
7. FAO works closely with its Members to advocate for sustainable practices by assisting in the development of policy and legal frameworks, identifying suitable species for local environments, transferring technological know-how, building capacities and attracting finance. These efforts are supported by numerous FAO technical guides to advance good and sustainable aquaculture practices.

Follow up question:

In your opinion what are the main challenges that aquatic food production systems will face in the next decade?

1. In a world where almost 800 million are undernourished today, and where the world's population will reach 9.7 billion people by 2050, the need for technical and sustainable solutions to address hunger and malnutrition is of utmost urgency.
2. Just to ensure that the per capita consumption of aquatic animal foods in 2050 is maintained at current levels, the global supply would require a 22 percent rise.
3. But consumption rates and future population growth differs between regions. In Africa, for example, a 74% increase in aquatic food supply would be needed to keep up with current per capita consumption rates.
4. These figures are sobering reflections of the ongoing challenge to feed the world, requiring major investments, adequate policy frameworks and notable transformation in the sector. This is at the core of FAO's call to invest in a Blue Transformation, for a world where aquatic foods play a more significant and impactful role in ending hunger and poverty.
5. Thank you for your attention.