Indigenous People Negatively Affected by Fish Farms/Fisheries, Updated May 19, 2017

Finally, someone has put together the stats on how much seafood is eaten by coastal indigenous people around the world. It is 2.1 million metric tonnes: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0166681.

This is as useful a document as The Sea Around Us report that summed the global take of fish stocks used for fish farms. Note that Daniel Pauly, UBC, is part of both of these huge studies.

Here is the abstract:

"Coastal Indigenous peoples rely on ocean resources and are highly vulnerable to ecosystem and economic change. Their challenges have been observed and recognized at local and regional scales, yet there are no global-scale analyses to inform international policies. We compile available data for over 1,900 coastal Indigenous communities around the world representing 27 million people across 87 countries. Based on available data at local and regional levels, we estimate a total global yearly seafood consumption of 2.1 million (1.5 million–2.8 million) metric tonnes by coastal Indigenous peoples, equal to around 2% of global yearly commercial fisheries catch. Results reflect the crucial role of seafood for these communities; on average, consumption per capita is 15 times higher than non-Indigenous country populations. These findings contribute to an urgently needed sense of scale to coastal Indigenous issues, and will hopefully prompt increased recognition and directed research regarding the marine knowledge and resource needs of Indigenous peoples. Marine resources are crucial to the continued existence of coastal Indigenous peoples, and their needs must be explicitly incorporated into management policies."

Here is the global picture:

 

The problems are many, and the declining health and population of indigenous people are results:

"Indigenous groups include some 370 million people, 5% of the global population, and an overwhelming number exist in precarious socioeconomic and political conditions [1]. Along the world’s oceans, coastal Indigenous peoples (CIPs) share vital links to marine ecosystems that conserve their cultural heritage and underpin food sovereignty (the right to define and access healthy and culturally-appropriate food [2]). At the same time, these strong links make them particularly vulnerable to challenges—including declines of coastal marine fish populations [3,4], climate change [5], pollution, and multi-scale social-economic dynamics [6,7]—that affect their fishing practices [8–10]."

Fish farms decimating global fish stocks of forage fish is among the largest problems facing these people.