Climate-Resilient Supply Chains: Adapting to the Fisheries of the Future
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Climate-Resilient Supply Chains: Adapting to the Fisheries of the Future is a collaboration among the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, URI Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, URI Coastal Resources Center/Rhode Island Sea Grant, and Eating with the Ecosystem. The project began in 2019 and is scheduled to be complete by 2021. It is funded by a NOAA Coastal and Ocean Climate Applications (COCA) grant.
Project Purpose
As a result of climate change and variability, fish stocks are shifting in location, timing, and abundance, altering the mix of species available to the seafood supply chain. The purpose of this project is to explore the vulnerability and adaptability of New England’s wild seafood supply chains under the complex realities of a changing climate. The team is motivated by three research questions:
How vulnerable is the seafood supply chain to changes in the species composition of regional landings? What aspects contribute to or detract from vulnerability, and what adaptive strategies can be taken?
How flexible is local consumer demand to changes in the species composition of regional landings, specifically with regard to emerging species that become newly available in an area and climate “winner” species that become increasingly abundant in an area due to climate-induced range shifts?
What are the most effective techniques for explaining the impacts of climate change to seafood consumers and for building consumer demand for emerging and climate “winner” species?
STAGE 1: PERFORMING THE RESEARCH (2020-2022)
Part I. Seafood Supply Chain Key informant interviews
We plan to interview at least 30 seafood supply chain participants between the post-harvesting and consumption stage (i.e., first-order dealers, processors, wholesale distributors, retail stores, restaurants, institutions, and community- supported fishery operators) throughout Northeast states (New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine). We will use these interviews to enrich our understanding of the current and past impacts of climate change and variability on seafood supply chains and to learn how supply chain actors have responded to these changes. Additionally, we will explore case studies to understand current and future adaptation needs and opportunities, focused on (1) emerging species that are (or are predicted to become) newly available in a given area and (2) traditional species that are experiencing (or are predicted to experience) an increase in availability in a given area. Finally, the interviews will use a set of scenarios to prompt interviewees to think about their actions in the context of whole-system change. The contact person for this portion of the project is Kate Masury (kate@eatingwiththeecosystem.org)
You can find the published results of this work here:
Part II. Consumer survey
The purpose of this portion of the project is to understand how consumers in the Northeast will respond to unfamiliar emergent species: will they accept them, and if so, at what price? The survey will include a choice experiment, a method used to analyze and quantify people’s preferences for attributes, especially when the attributes are in a trade-off relationship. Information gathered through the consumer survey will complement the key informant interviews, which are focused on the supply side of the market, with information about the demand side of the seafood market. The contact person for this portion of the project is Hiro Uchida (huchida@uri.edu).
Part III. Field experiment in restaurants
A restaurant experiment will help us gauge consumer interest in emerging species in a real-life setting. During the first step of the experiment--the “marketing” phase--we will work with a collaborating seafood dealer to locate and purchase unfamiliar climate “winner” species and distribute them, free of charge, to participating restaurants in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and southern Massachusetts. Between 10 and 20 participating restaurants will serve these fish to their customers. What they charge for these fish and how they serve them will be up to them. The marketing phase will continue for 4-8 weeks. Each week, we will collect information from participating restaurants on: (a) how they served the fish, (b) the price they charged, and (c) customers’ reactions. During the second step--the “sales” phase, we will measure the extent to which restaurants purchase the species of interest when they are made available at market price. Again working with our partner dealer, we will arrange for the same 5-6 species to be made available to their restaurant clients (both those who participated in the marketing phase and those who did not), with the key difference that during the sales phase, these species will be available at whatever price the market dictates. During this phase, we will keep track of purchases made, enabling us to analyze the effect of marketing on increasing the demand for the unfamiliar fish species. The contact person for this portion of the project is Kate Masury (kate@eatingwiththeecosystem.org).
Part IV. Testing climate awareness strategies for seafood lovers
Identifying effective messaging associated with climate change is an essential part of changing behavior to meet the needs of a changing climate. In this part of the project, we will use focus groups to road-test several tactics for communicating climate information found in NOAA’s Northeast Fish and Shellfish Climate Vulnerability Assessment and other relevant climate and fisheries research. Tactics to be evaluated will be informed by the key informant interviews, the consumer survey, and field and marketing experiment. Several alternatives will be tested among a broad range of consumers to determine which language and images are most likely to result in consumers (a) continuing to purchase local seafood despite changes in species composition and (b) switching to “climate winner” species. We also aim to understand differences in messaging effectiveness among different types of consumers. The contact person for this portion of the project is Dawn Kotowicz (dkotowicz@uri.edu).
STAGE 2: ACTING ON THE RESEARCH (2023-2024)
Roadmap for Climate-Resilient Seafood Supply Chains
In an effort to move our research into practice, we are building an informational tool to help New England seafood businesses navigate species shifts. The ‘roadmap for climate resilience’ will reflect insights, themes, and observations gathered from industry members across the seafood supply chain. Building from our most recent study, “Climate Winners: Adapting to Shifting Species in the New England Supply Chain”, we plan to host collaborative sessions throughout 2024 featuring industry members, policymakers, and other nonprofit organizations. The conversations will yield strategies for incorporating climate-ready seafood species, opportunities for collaboration among sectors, and levers of change within and outside of the industry. This is a new and important frontier for the project, and we are hopeful it can play a role in setting the stage for generating innovative, industry-led solutions to our changing oceans. Please visit our dedicated website page below for more information.