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oceans
futures
OCEANS FUTURES PROVIDES EARLY WARNING OF FISHERIES CONFLICT HOTSPOTS SO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY CAN TAKE BOLD, COLLABORATIVE ACTION ON CONSERVATION AND CONFLICT PREVENTION TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT OF PEACE FOR PEOPLE AND NATURE.
Fish have become a conflict commodity. Between World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a quarter of all interstate militarized disputes between democracies were fought over fisheries. In the last four decades, interstate fisheries conflict has increased 20-fold. And illegal fishing has replaced piracy as the leading global maritime security threat.
Climate change will further exacerbate these challenges worldwide: climate-driven fish migration will result in newly fish-rich and fish-poor places, with devastating consequences for people and nature. In increasingly fish-poor places, there likely will be escalating rates of blue food insecurity, unemployment, civil unrest, and human migration. In increasingly fish-rich places, intensified competition and conflict over access to this commodity are anticipated. In both places, we will see elevated environmental destruction.
Oceans Futures delivers predictive analysis to advance understanding of the issues that can lead to fisheries conflicts. We hope this information will prevent future fisheries conflicts and identify key ocean conservation and socio-economic capacity building opportunities in seascapes vital to achieving 30x30 ambitions and effective, equitable, and durable conservation areas.
We envision:
- A peaceful ocean that supports the job and food security of small-scale fishing communities and de-escalates geopolitical tensions
- A healthy ocean that supports marine biodiversity and the conditions that allow threatened and endangered species to recover
- A just ocean that enables fishing free from human rights abuse and poor labor conditions, and equitable access to sustainably caught living marine resources
- A prosperous ocean that supports healthy fisheries and the communities, businesses, and industries that help feed our world
Our theory of change is that the issues raised by Oceans Futures will usher in a new era of early warning and strategic planning, mobilize investments, and catalyze new partnerships across the conservation, maritime security, and ocean private sector communities. This will provide opportunities for governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs, the private sector, and the philanthropic community to take bold, preventative action—and by doing so, safeguard both people and nature.
The Oceans Futures initiative brings together a growing coalition of climate, fisheries, conservation, technology, political, and security experts. Equipped with the information from this platform, these communities can better leverage billions of dollars for oceans and develop shared strategies, contributing significantly to shared political priorities including 30x30 and the global fight against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
During 2022–2025, the Oceans Futures initiative will:
- Develop the Oceans Futures platform through multiple phases, the outputs of which will package timely, climate-driven fisheries data to create holistic fisheries conflict and blue food security solutions;
- Engage key political, policy, and seafood industry communities to elevate attention around and resources for fisheries issues and broader ocean conservation initiatives;
- Support the distribution of resources in regions identified as needing them the most.
Phase 1: Phase 1 of the Oceans Futures platform, launched in November 2023, includes visualizations of datasets including climate-driven fish migration, governance, and security layers. These visualizations allow exploration and analysis by users, and our hotspot analysis identifies those regions of the world that are at greatest risk of conflict. Deep-dives into three key Spotlight regions allows users to engage in storytelling about fisheries conflict to contextualize data and illustrate the different causes of and solutions to fisheries conflict. The Spotlights explore the Arctic, the Horn of Africa, and Ecuador.
Phase 2: Phase 2 will expand our understanding of fisheries conflict by answering the question: what makes small-scale conflicts escalate? We are working with Oregon State University, Cornell, Exeter University, and the Peterson Institute of International Economics to build a new global database of small-scale, non-violent fisheries conflicts to better understand their causes. This database will feed a machine learning model to help us identify the factors that cause some conflicts to escalate, and others to fizzle. This information is critical for learning lessons that can help improve our conservation and political solutions, and ultimately prevent conflict.
