22 October 2010: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Fish Centre have released a report titled “Blue Harvest: Inland Fisheries as an Ecosystem Service,” on the sidelines of the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), taking place in Nagoya, Japan.

The report aims to help inform future approaches to conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems by reviewing the importance of inland fisheries as an ecosystem service, the pressures upon them, and management approaches to sustain them. The report identifies the various drivers of change in inland fisheries, including climate change. In particular, it spotlights changes in runoff patterns from increases in temperature and changes in rain fall, leading to changes in flow regimes, as well as in breeding and feeding habitats.

The reports recommends five investments: improving understanding of inland fisheries’ vulnerability to environmental change; developing viable options for addressing the threats posed to inland fisheries by environmental change; building adaptive capacity among key stakeholder groups to increase resilience of inland fisheries at local, national and regional scales; improving governance of inland fisheries and their ecosystems; and developing capacity to sustain and enhance social benefits from these resources. [The Report “Blue Harvest”] [UNEP Press Release]