Climate Change as an opportunity towards ADaptive sustaINable AquacuLture

It is now widely accepted that at least part of the earth's 0.6 C deg warming during the 20th century is caused by human activities, and the research effort on the impacts of climate changes has increased the last 15 years. In the same period the importa nce of aquaculture for food production and food security has been increasingly acknowledged. Surprisingly, very little research has been undertaken to link aquaculture and climate change. The main elements of climate change that could potentially impact o n aquaculture production is sea level and temperature rise, change in monsoonal rain patterns and extreme climatic events and water stress. Furthermore, climate impacts may work indirectly through important inputs to aquaculture, where the most obvious an d commonly discussed indirect impact is related to fisheries, both their role in supplying fish meal and oils, and their role as competitors with aquaculture products in the market place. Climate change impacts, if any, are likely to produce more signif icant net effects in some regions and for some species more that others. India and Norway, is located in the tropical, and in the cold temperate zone respectively. Furthermore, freshwater aquaculture dominates in India, while in Norway marine water aquacu lture dominates. While feed inputs for Indian carps mainly stems from agriculture, the salmon still depends on feeds input from fisheries. Thus the two countries aquaculture industries could be regarded as two extremities within world aquaculture, and a c omparison of climate impacts will be highly valuable. Our objective is to build a holistic and integrated knowledge base that enable a quantitative analysis of the dynamic two-way interactions between climate change and aquaculture in a future full-proj ect. The project is collaboration between NIVA and TERI, and the project relies on TERI's expertise on climate change and sustainable development, and NIVA's strengths on aquaculture production and marketing.