Climate services for aquatic food systems in Asia and Africa: Current state, challenges, and opportunities to enhance at scale

Abstract

Climate risk management has become a national priority for many countries in Asia and Africa, such as Bangladesh, Zambia, and Malawi, with high vulnerability to climate impacts. Bangladesh is vulnerable to heatwaves, erratic and intense rains, and extremes such as cyclones and floods, while Zambia and Malawi are vulnerable to increasing frequency and intensity of floods and droughts together with rising temperatures. Climate information and advisory services have supported operational and strategic risk management across various food systems, but they remain underinvested in aquaculture and largely unexplored in fisheries. As such, enhancing these services for aquaculture at scale and exploring such systems for fisheries are critically needed to de-risk value chains and build the resilience of the aquatic food systems sector. The capacity to deliver and access these services is highly uneven and inadequate across the aquatic food sector economy in the Global South.