Climate change is already affecting marine salmon farming through impacts including rising water temperatures, lower oxygen levels, insecurity in the feed supply chain, and increasing incidence of algal blooms and jellyfish. These effects are creating challenges for aquaculture production, and sensitivity to climate change impacts is heightened in marine aquaculture operations where fish and farming infrastructure are exposed to the surrounding environment. Successful adaptation to climate change will rely on adaptive capacity, the ability of a system to prepare for stressors in advance or adjust and respond to the effects caused by those stressors. Adaptive capacity can reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts by modulating the relationship between exposure to climate change and sensitivity to climate change.[1]
Early work on adaptive capacity emphasizes the role of assets, specifically the availability of financial resources and technology. Several climate change adaptation responses have been proposed for salmon aquaculture ranging from on-farm solutions including early warning systems to transformative technologies such as offshore, submersible, and land-based farming systems. However, the availability of these technologies and financial resources does not guarantee adaptation. Increasingly, structural, social, and cognitive dimensions of adaptive capacity are also thought to be important in mobilizing adaptive capacity.[2]
Adaptive capacity is latent within systems, making it difficult to identify important dimensions of adaptive capacity until it is mobilized to address new challenges. However, climate change is not the first challenge encountered in salmon farming, and farmed salmon production has continued to grow over the past few decades despite these challenges, suggesting that adaptive capacity is present. Therefore, previous responses to system challenges provide an opportunity to identify adaptive capacity in action. Using a modified Delphi consensus building approach, we engaged a panel of industry experts in the development of an adaptive capacity framework. We engaged industry experts in discussions about challenges and responses to those challenges within the salmon farming sector, developed an initial adaptive capacity framework based on those discussions, and then used a questionnaire to validate the framework and gather information about the status of adaptive capacity within the salmon farming industry.
Preliminary results indicate that assets including financial assets, access to technology, and human resources are important dimensions of adaptive capacity. Social-cognitive dimensions including social organization, agency, flexibility, motivation, and knowledge were also mobilized towards addressing system stressors and will be important in adapting to climate change.
This work was supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/V021613/1).
[1]Engle, N. L. (2011). Adaptive capacity and its assessment. Global environmental change, 21(2), 647-656.
[2]Cinner, J. E., & Barnes, M. L. (2019). Social dimensions of resilience in social-ecological systems. One Earth, 1(1), 51-56.