UN Food Agency Faces Backlash Over Aquaculture Expansion Goals

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations aims to increase global aquaculture production by 75% by 2040. This blue transformation agenda seeks to combat global hunger, but an analysis by the Changing Markets Foundation warns the expansion could require harvesting up to 41.4 million tonnes of wild fish annually to produce fishmeal and fish oil for carnivorous species like shrimp and salmon.

This requirement represents approximately 46% of the 2020 global catch. The Changing Markets Foundation and UN special rapporteur Elisa Morgera argue that diverting these resources removes essential nutrition from marine ecosystems and coastal communities. In Senegal, for example, fish consumption per person dropped by more than 10kg between 1999 and 2019 as industrial factories competed with local populations for fish.

Critics are urging the UN agency to implement safeguards that prioritize edible wild fish for human consumption and shift production toward lower-input species. These concerns were highlighted during a December 2023 workshop in Ghana and in a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.