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Global marine fisheries are in crisis: 90 percent are fully fished and overfished. The result is lost economic benefits of approximately $83 billion a year ---the \"sunken billions\" of the title. Reducing overfishing would allow severely overexploited fish stocks to recover over time. Subsequently, the combination of larger fish stocks and reduced but sustainable fishing activities would lead to higher economic yields. However, to reach that equilibrium, comprehensive and coordinated reforms are necessary. The Sunken Billions Revisited: Progress and Challenges in Global Marine Fisheries builds on The Sunken Billions: The Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform, a 2009 study published by the World Bank and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, but with a deeper regional analysis.

The tropics contain the overwhelming majority of Earth’s biodiversity: their terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems hold more than three-quarters of all species, including almost all shallow-water corals and over 90% of terrestrial birds. However, tropical ecosystems are also subject to pervasive and interacting stressors, such as deforestation, overfishing and climate change, and they are set within a socio-economic context that includes growing pressure from an increasingly globalized world, larger and more affluent tropical populations, and weak governance and response capacities. Concerted local, national and international actions are urgently required to prevent a collapse of tropical biodiversity. The immense biodiversity of tropical ecosystems is threatened by multiple interacting local and global stressors that can only be addressed by the concerted efforts of grassroots organizations, researchers, national governments and the international community.

Globally, fisheries are challenged by the combined impacts of overfishing, degradation of ecosystems and impacts of climate change, while fisheries livelihoods are further pressured by conservation policy imperatives. Fishers' adaptive responses to these pressures, such as exiting from a fishery to pursue alternative livelihoods, determine their own vulnerability, as well as the potential for reducing fishing effort and sustaining fisheries. The willingness and ability to make particular adaptations in response to change, such as exiting from a declining fishery, is influenced by economic, cultural and institutional factors operating at scales from individual fishers to national economies. Previous studies of exit from fisheries at single or few sites, offer limited insight into the relative importance of individual and larger-scale social and economic factors. We asked 599 fishers how they would respond to hypothetical scenarios of catch declines in 28 sites in five western Indian Ocean countries. We investigated how socioeconomic variables at the individual-, household- and site-scale affected whether they would exit fisheries. Site-level factors had the greatest influence on readiness to exit, but these relationships were contrary to common predictions. Specifically, higher levels of infrastructure development and economic vitality - expected to promote exit from fisheries - were associated with less readiness to exit. This may be due to site level histories of exit from fisheries, greater specialisation of fishing households, or higher rewards from fishing in more economically developed sites due to technology, market access, catch value and government subsidies. At the individual and household scale, fishers from households with more livelihood activities, and fishers with lower catch value were more willing to exit. These results demonstrate empirically how adaptive responses to change are influenced by factors at multiple scales, and highlight the importance of understanding natural resource-based livelihoods in the context of the wider economy and society.

The magnitude of subsidies provided to the fishing sector by governments worldwide is immense—an estimated $35.4 billion USD per year. The majority of these subsidies may be impeding efforts to sustainably manage fisheries by incentivizing overfishing and overcapacity. Recognizing the threat these subsidies pose, the World Trade Organization has set a goal of reaching an agreement that would end fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity, overfishing, and illegal fishing. However, negotiations have been hampered by uncertainty around the likely effects of reforming these subsidies. Here we present a novel method for translating a bioeconomic model into an interactive online decision support tool that draws upon real-world data on fisheries subsidies and industrial fishing activity so users can directly compare the relative ambition levels of different subsidy reform options.

Global marine fisheries are currently underperforming, largely due to overfishing. An analysis of global databases finds that resource rent net of subsidies from rebuilt world fisheries could increase from the current negative US$13 billion to positive US$54 billion per year, resulting in a net gain of US$600 to US$1,400 billion in present value over fifty years after rebuilding. To realize this gain, governments need to implement a rebuilding program at a cost of about US$203 (US$130-US$292) billion in present value. We estimate that it would take just 12 years after rebuilding begins for the benefits to surpass the cost. Even without accounting for the potential boost to recreational fisheries, and ignoring ancillary and non-market values that would likely increase, the potential benefits of rebuilding global fisheries far outweigh the costs.

In April 2023, the United States accepted the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, the first WTO deal that focuses on environmental issues and just the second agreement reached under the WTO's auspices. \"We are proud to be among the first WTO members to accept this agreement... It will help improve the lives of fishers and workers here in the United States and elsewhere,\" remarked U.S Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai. Adopted at the WTO's twelfth ministerial conference in June 2022, the agreement, which establishes three disciplines that prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies, is the result of more than two decades of negotiations. The world's top five fisheries subsidizers-China, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and the United States-have already signed on to the agreement, which will enter into force upon acceptance by two-thirds of the WTO's membership. Though an important initial step, the agreement is only partial. Negotiations continue on \"outstanding issues... [to] achieve a comprehensive agreement on fisheries subsidies.\"

We examined the development of coral reef science and the policies, institutions, and governance frameworks for management of coral reefs in China in order to highlight the wicked problem of preserving reefs while simultaneously promoting human development and nation building. China and other sovereign states in the region are experiencing unprecedented economic expansion, rapid population growth, mass migration, widespread coastal development, and loss of habitat. We analyzed a large, fragmented literature on the condition of coral reefs in China and the disputed territories of the South China Sea. We found that coral abundance has declined by at least 80% over the past 30 years on coastal fringing reefs along the Chinese mainland and adjoining Hainan Island. On offshore atolls and archipelagos claimed by 6 countries in the South China Sea, coral cover has declined from an average of >60% to around 20% within the past 10-15 years. Climate change has affected these reefs far less than coastal development, pollution, overfishing, and destructive fishing practices. Ironically, these widespread declines in the condition of reefs are unfolding as China's research and reef-management capacity are rapidly expanding. Before the loss of corals becomes irreversible, governance of China's coastal reefs could be improved by increasing public awareness of declining ecosystem services, by providing financial support for training of reef scientists and managers, by improving monitoring of coral reef dynamics and condition to better inform policy development, and by enforcing existing regulations that could protect coral reefs. In the South China Sea, changes in policy and legal frameworks, refinement of governance structures, and cooperation among neighboring countries are urgently needed to develop cooperative management of contested offshore reefs. Examinamos el desarrollo de la ciencia sobre arrecifes de coral y los marcos de referencia de políticas, instituciones y gobernanza para el manejo de arrecifes de coral en China para resaltar el problema malvado de la preservación de arrecifes al mismo tiempo que se promueve el desarrollo humano y nacional. China y otros estados soberanos en la región están experimentando una expansión económica, un crecimiento poblacional acelerado, migración masiva, desarrollo costero extensivo y pérdida de hábitat sin precedentes. Analizamos literatura, extensa y fragmentada, sobre la condición de los arrecifes de coral en China y en los territorios en disputa en el Mar de la China Meridional. Encontramos que la abundancia de coral ha declinado en por lo menos 80% durante los últimos 30 años en los arrecifes costeros a lo largo de la China continental y en la Isla Hainan adyacente. En los atolones y archipiélagos reclamadas por 6 países en el Mar de la China Meridional, la cobertura de coral ha declinado en un promedio de >60% a cerca de 20% en los últimos 10-15 años. El cambio climático ha afectado a estos arrecifes mucho menos que el desarrollo costero, la contaminación, la sobrepesca y las prácticas pesqueras destructivas. Irónicamente, estas declinaciones extensivas en la condición de los arrecifes se están revelando al mismo tiempo que se está expandiendo rápidamente la capacidad china de investigación y manejo de arrecifes. Antes que la pérdida de arrecifes sea irreversible, la gobernanza de los arrecifes costeros debe ser mejorada mediante el incremento de la conciencia pública sobre la declinación de los servicios del ecosistema, proporcionando soporte financiero para la capacitación de científicos y manejadores de arrecifes, mejorando el monitoreo de la dinámica y condición de los arrecifes de coral para obtener información para el desarrollo de políticas y aplicando la regulación existente que puede proteger a los arrecifes de coral. En el Mar de la China Meridional, se requiere urgentemente de cambios en los marcos políticos y legales, refinamiento de las estructuras de gobernanza y cooperación entre los países vecinos para desarrollar manejo colaborativo de los arrecifes en disputa.

There is now widespread agreement that fish stocks are severely depleted and fishing activity must be limited. At the same time, the promise of the green economy appears to offer profitable new opportunities for a sustainable seafood industry. What do these seemingly contradictory ideas of natural limits and green growth mean in practice? What do they tell us more generally about current transformations to the way nature is valued and managed? And who suffers and who benefits from these new ecological arrangements? Far from abstract policy considerations, Patrick Bresnihan shows how new approaches to environmental management are transforming the fisheries and generating novel forms of exclusion in the process.Transforming the Fisheriesexamines how scientific, economic, and regulatory responses to the problem of overfishing have changed over the past twenty years. Based on fieldwork in a commercial fishing port in Ireland, Bresnihan weaves together ethnography, science, history, and social theory to explore the changing relationships between knowledge, nature, and the market. For Bresnihan, many of the key concepts that govern contemporary environmental thinking-such as scarcity, sustainability, the commons, and enclosure-should be reconsidered in light of the collapse of global fish stocks and the different ways this problem is being addressed. Only by considering these concepts anew can we begin to reinvent the ecological commons we need for the future.