Minimising climate impact on fisheries: mitigation and adaptation solutions for future climate regimes

ExpectedOutcome:

Selected proposals are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

• Contribution to sustainable fisheries for fair, healthy, climate-resilient and environment-friendly food systems with low impact on aquatic ecosystems, supporting the EU common fisheries policy, the European Green Deal and in particular the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 and the farm to fork strategy;
• Transformation of fisheries to make a significant contribution to climate-neutrality;
• Contribution to more precise, technologically advanced data collection (notably through the use of techniques such as artificial intelligence, sensors and robotics) which encompasses the natural and social ecosystem context;
• Understanding of the resilience potential to climate change of exploited resources and build up the adaptive capacity for fisheries management;
• Preparation of the seafood sector to seize opportunities to harvest shifting stocks in the most sustainable manner, taking into account environmental, social and economic considerations.

Scope:

Proposals are expected to investigate the impacts of climate change on biological and ecological processes such as shifts in stocks distribution, abundance and density, fish health, stock productivity, habitats, regime shifts in ecosystems and altered growth, reproduction rates, seafood safety and overall changes in the ecosystem potential production. They should also explore and test innovative measures to mitigate climate change (such as new designs of fishing gears or new fishing strategies that do not resuspend carbon from the seabed or new fishing strategies which improve energy use efficiency or strengthen circularity aspects) and adaptive solutions (such as valorisation of new catches or building resilience actions).

Proposals should include studies representing the whole spectrum of European fisheries, including small-scale fisheries, and the related biotic, abiotic, social and economic conditions. They should follow an interdisciplinary approach and cover both scientific and socioeconomic aspects.

They should build on the work of Horizon 2020 projects ClimeFish and CERES and others and provide applicable approaches and tools to the fishing sector. They should also build on the work of initiatives such as the EMFF-funded studies on “Climate change and the Common Fisheries Policy: adaptation and building resilience to the effects of climate change on fisheries and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from fishing”, and “Adapting postharvest activities in the value chain of fisheries and aquaculture to the effects of climate change and mitigating their climate footprint through the reduction of greenhouse gases emissions”.

Also importantly, proposals should build synergies with the projects funded under the topics HORIZON-CL6-2023-BIODIV-01-5: Understanding and reducing bycatch of protected species in Destination “Biodiversity and ecosystem services” and ‘HORIZON-CL6-2022-CLIMATE-01-02: Understanding the oceanic carbon cycle’ as well as with work done under other organisations such as the OECD Committee for Fisheries. Selected proposals should collaborate with each other.

Proposals are encouraged to cooperate with actors such as the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). The possible participation of the JRC in the project would consist in providing and analysing fisheries.

This topic should involve the effective contribution of SSH disciplines.

Specific Topic Conditions:

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.