Caribbean Community climate-smarting fisheries, but slowly

By Michelle Nurse Last updated Mar 18, 2015

Vendors at a fish market in Belize (Photo via Fisheries Department Belize City, Belize)

[su_pullquote align=”right”]“Climate-smart fisheries require improving efficiency in the use of natural resources to produce fish, maintaining the resilience of aquatic systems and the communities that rely on them.” – Olu Ajayi, CTA. [/su_pullquote]KINGSTON, Jamaica, IPS – Caribbean nations have begun work on a plan to ‘climate smart’ the region’s fisheries as part of overall efforts to secure food supplies.

The concept is in keeping with plans by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) to improve the “integration of agriculture and climate readiness” as the region prepares to deal with the impacts of climate change and the increasing demand for food.

Olu Ajayi, CTA’s senior programme coordinator, told IPS in an email that climate-smarting the region’s aquatic resources will “enable the sector to continue to contribute to sustainable development, while reducing the vulnerability associated with the negative impacts of climate change”.