Aquaculture plays a fundamental role in feeding the growing world's population demand for aquatic food and in achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, being the fastest growing food sector in the world. Aquaculture has demonstrated its resilience to change and is increasingly recognised for its environmental responsibility, reduced footprint and high efficiency in protein transformation and provision. Nonetheless, aquaculture has been deeply challenged by climate change impacts. Hence, the implementation of climate-smart aquaculture practices and technologies adapted to the specific regional conditions is crucial to assure a steady and sustainable seafood provision that meets the international safety and quality requirements. Such approaches include: (1) sustainably improving aquaculture productivity and farming efficiency of the production system; (2) increasing adaptive capacity and resilience of aquaculture to climate change; and (3) contributing to climate change mitigation.
The ‘International Conference on Climate Smart and Safe Aquaculture’ will take place from May 21-22 in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon.
The event aims to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge among professionals to advance the understanding, collaboration and capabilities of aquaculture to respond to the impact of climate change in a rapidly changing global environment. It will also draw on lessons learnt, current status, with a focus on new development of climate smart strategies, tools for animal welfare assessment and challenges imposed by emerging hazards to enhance the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises that impact aquaculture and aquatic food security.
Objectives ● review recent development of tools to assess animal welfare in aquaculture to diminish health burdens and improve management practices under changing climate; ● provide information on the potential impacts of emerging hazards for human health through the consumption of farmed seafood as a consequence of climate change impacts; and ● identify knowledge gaps, research needs and new opportunities to develop climate-smart aquaculture practices to build capacities and transfer of technologies across Europe. Funded by MycoFish Funding from FCT I.P. PTDC/CVT-CVT/2660/2021(https://doi.org/10.54499/PTDC/CVT-CVT/2660/2021) AquaClimAdapt FCT Aqua-CLIMADAT: PTDC/CTA-AMB/0592/2021(https://doi.org/10.54499/PTDC/CTA-AMB/0592/2021)