Periodic Reporting for period 4 - FAIRFISH (Hidden Hunger, Forgotten Food)
Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2024-07-31
Food Security is a grand challenge of our time. However, a failure to tackle food security in an interdisciplinary manner, incorporating ecological, social, and health sciences, has limited progress towards meeting global food security targets. Small-scale fisheries have been largely left out of food security discourse, and thus appear to be ‘forgotten food’, despite involving 90% of the world’s fishers - over 300 million people - predominantly low-income countries. Furthermore, small scale fisheries hold considerable potential to address ‘hidden hunger’, or micronutrient deficiencies, which is one of the most pervasive forms of food insecurity, implicated in over a million deaths annually. This is because fish are particularly high in many micronutrients essential to health and development. Although considerable variation exists in nutrient concentrations between fish species we do not have a systematic understanding of which species are most likely to address the most pressing nutritional needs. particular effort is needed to understand which species have the greatest concentrations of key nutrients, where these species are found, and how they are likely to respond to contemporary fishery threats. .
This project addresses this challenge by developing a theoretically grounded and interdisciplinary understanding of the ecological and socio-cultural determinants of the nutritional contributions Small-Scale Fisheries make to human health. Specifically, FAIRFISH will for the first time:
1. Establish the ecological and environmental determinants of nutrient availability from fish.
2. Determine what power relations enable or constrain access to nutritious food.
3. Quantify the impact of key social drivers of nutritional inequality, and uncover opportunities to meet nutritional needs.
This project addresses this challenge by developing a theoretically grounded and interdisciplinary understanding of the ecological and socio-cultural determinants of the nutritional contributions Small-Scale Fisheries make to human health. Specifically, FAIRFISH will for the first time:
1. Establish the ecological and environmental determinants of nutrient availability from fish.
2. Determine what power relations enable or constrain access to nutritious food.
3. Quantify the impact of key social drivers of nutritional inequality, and uncover opportunities to meet nutritional needs.
Actions for WP 1 and 3 are well under way with components complete. Data collection, analysis, and writing to address Questions 1 and 2 from work package 1, and Q7 from WP 3 are complete. The outputs of this are published in Nature (Hicks et al 2019), and in review in Nature (Robinson et al), and in Nature Communications (Maire).
Field work in Seychelles to address Q3 of WP1 is complete and analyses are underway, fieldwork to address Q 8 in WP 3 is underway.
Nine peer reviewed publications have been published, in the top interdisciplinary journals (e.g. Nature and Science) as well as the top social science disciplinary journals (e.g. Antipode), more are in review and underway.
Members of the advisory panel have met in Canada and the UK. The PI has hosted workshops in Canada, the UK, and Kenya.
Research permits for Seychelles and Ghana approved, and for Kenya are underway.
PI awarded Prestigious 2019 Leverhulme Prize in geography in '"achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising". Team member E. Maire has been awarded the Monaco prize for PhD research.
Engagement to establish robust collaborators and ensure policy uptake in Seychelles is complete, Kenya well under way, and Ghana (as I have requested an amendment to change Madagascar to Ghana), is beginning.
The PI has been invited to present on this work as a plenary or keynote speaker at 3 events including, MARBEC in France, IMCC in Germany, and the Bevan series in the US. The PI and researcher have also been invited to present or participate in scientific and policy relevant conferences and workshops, such as by the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the United Nations Food System Summit 2020, and Stanford University, Stockholm University, and EAT’s Blue Food Assessment.
We have secured funding and agreement with FishBase and the FAO with regards developing a data repository for the data collected. Fish Base have agreed to host our data and model to ensure maximum use of this public good, FishBase has ~300,000 unique visitors a month.
We have produced one press release resulting in radio interviews and news coverage in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and Australasia.
Additional funding and collaborations have been secured to support engagement with New Internationalist journalists and for a documentary commissioned by the BBC world Service.
Field work in Seychelles to address Q3 of WP1 is complete and analyses are underway, fieldwork to address Q 8 in WP 3 is underway.
Nine peer reviewed publications have been published, in the top interdisciplinary journals (e.g. Nature and Science) as well as the top social science disciplinary journals (e.g. Antipode), more are in review and underway.
Members of the advisory panel have met in Canada and the UK. The PI has hosted workshops in Canada, the UK, and Kenya.
Research permits for Seychelles and Ghana approved, and for Kenya are underway.
PI awarded Prestigious 2019 Leverhulme Prize in geography in '"achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising". Team member E. Maire has been awarded the Monaco prize for PhD research.
Engagement to establish robust collaborators and ensure policy uptake in Seychelles is complete, Kenya well under way, and Ghana (as I have requested an amendment to change Madagascar to Ghana), is beginning.
The PI has been invited to present on this work as a plenary or keynote speaker at 3 events including, MARBEC in France, IMCC in Germany, and the Bevan series in the US. The PI and researcher have also been invited to present or participate in scientific and policy relevant conferences and workshops, such as by the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the United Nations Food System Summit 2020, and Stanford University, Stockholm University, and EAT’s Blue Food Assessment.
We have secured funding and agreement with FishBase and the FAO with regards developing a data repository for the data collected. Fish Base have agreed to host our data and model to ensure maximum use of this public good, FishBase has ~300,000 unique visitors a month.
We have produced one press release resulting in radio interviews and news coverage in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and Australasia.
Additional funding and collaborations have been secured to support engagement with New Internationalist journalists and for a documentary commissioned by the BBC world Service.
People gain nutrients from a varied diet, although fish—which are a rich source of bioavailable micronutrients that are essential to human health—are often overlooked. A lack of understanding of the nutrient composition of most fish and how nutrient yields vary among fisheries has hindered the policy shifts that are needed to effectively harness the potential of fisheries for food and nutrition security. Using the concentration of 7 nutrients in more than 350 species of marine fish, we are able to estimate how environmental and ecological traits predict nutrient content of marine finfish species. We use this predictive model to quantify the global spatial patterns of the concentrations of nutrients in marine fisheries and compare nutrient yields to the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in human populations. We find that species from tropical thermal regimes contain higher concentrations of calcium, iron and zinc; smaller species contain higher concentrations of calcium, iron and omega-3 fatty acids; and species from cold thermal regimes or those with a pelagic feeding pathway contain higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids. There is no relationship between nutrient concentrations and total fishery yield, highlighting that the nutrient quality of a fishery is determined by the species composition. For a number of countries in which nutrient intakes are inadequate, nutrients available in marine finfish catches exceed the dietary requirements for populations that live within 100 km of the coast, and a fraction of current landings could be particularly impactful for children under 5 years of age. Our analyses suggest that fish-based food strategies have the potential to substantially contribute to global food and nutrition security.
These findings (Hicks et al 2019) form the core of this project, from which we are able to demonstrate the tropics are regions of particular concern in both in terms of the existing ecological diversity as well as a lack of social capacity to stem losses in biodiversity and meet human needs (Barlow et al 2018). However, emergent efforts to address this governance gap in Africa, distort power dynamics (Childs & Hicks 2019), remain unclear amongst policy makers (Schutter & Hicks 2019), and risk undermining the most vulnerable (Neimark et al 2020). Management progress has been most successful where capacity exists to support efforts (Mouillot et al 2020, Cinner et al 2020), and although alternate pathways are possible (Gephart et al 2020), efforts to tackle perverse incentives need to pay attention to the social support these incentives have come to provide (Cisneros-Montemayor et al 2020).
By the end of the project, we hope to have established the myriad ways in which power distorts the potential for people to benefit from available fisheries, and in doing so, support policy development through multilateral and international agreements and initiatives to enable a more equitable distribution of nutrition, whilst simultaneously minimising local and global environmental impacts.
These findings (Hicks et al 2019) form the core of this project, from which we are able to demonstrate the tropics are regions of particular concern in both in terms of the existing ecological diversity as well as a lack of social capacity to stem losses in biodiversity and meet human needs (Barlow et al 2018). However, emergent efforts to address this governance gap in Africa, distort power dynamics (Childs & Hicks 2019), remain unclear amongst policy makers (Schutter & Hicks 2019), and risk undermining the most vulnerable (Neimark et al 2020). Management progress has been most successful where capacity exists to support efforts (Mouillot et al 2020, Cinner et al 2020), and although alternate pathways are possible (Gephart et al 2020), efforts to tackle perverse incentives need to pay attention to the social support these incentives have come to provide (Cisneros-Montemayor et al 2020).
By the end of the project, we hope to have established the myriad ways in which power distorts the potential for people to benefit from available fisheries, and in doing so, support policy development through multilateral and international agreements and initiatives to enable a more equitable distribution of nutrition, whilst simultaneously minimising local and global environmental impacts.