The Global Environment Facility (GEF) supports developing countries to address the world’s most pressing environmental issues. GEF organizes its work around five focal areas – biodiversity loss, chemicals and waste, climate change, international waters, and land degradation – and takes an integrated approach to support e.g., more sustainable food systems, forest management, and cities. In recent years GEF has increased engagement on sustainable aquaculture with an expanding initial portfolio of projects.
GEFs investments are framed within overall trends which have seen capture fisheries tonnage largely stable since the 1990s at approx. 90 million tonnes, meaning aquaculture accounts for all growth and has grown faster than any other animal protein sector at an average growth rate of 6.7 percent per year over the past three decades. While the aquaculture sector occupies a critical space in the global food security equation - producing nutritional animal protein with a low environmental footprint comparable to terrestrial animal protein - the sector has long been criticized for causing environmental degradation.
In addition, each region comes with a distinct set of challenges. As an example, Asia produces more from aquaculture than from capture fisheries, and when the top producer is excluded in each region, Asia still has a high aquaculture share close to fifty percent. In contrast, if Egypt is excluded, Africa’s contribution to world aquaculture production was below ten percent in 2020, the lowest among regional and subregional groups.
In this session the evolution of GEFs aquaculture investments will be presented. This includes investments across continents focused on sustainable practices, feeds, and livelihoods. It also includes anticipated African investments under the GEF Food Systems Impact Program. Considering regional and sub-regional differences, the program’s inbuilt mechanisms to both crowd in and channel global actors and resources to support country projects, and to collate and communicate the models and knowledge generated into policy fora and the agendas of public and private actors, will benefit countries.