Media releases

• Brock researchers predict steep decline in tropical fisheries due to climate change

  Thursday, August 13, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 11 August 2020 – R0124

  Within 30 years, tropical fisheries — on which some 1.9 billion people depend on for their food and livelihood — may see a decline of 40 per cent if nothing is done to mitigate climate change.

  This is the prediction of a new study, described in a paper co-authored by Jessica Blythe, Assistant Professor in Brock University’s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre (ESRC), and recently published in Nature Reviews — Earth & Environment.

  The researchers mapped out the drastic effects that warming oceans, rising sea levels and changes to ocean chemistry and ecosystems will have on tropical fish stocks, and by extension, on people. In many Pacific island nations, for example, fish can make up as much as 90 per cent of the animal protein in an average person’s diet.

  The study uses a model of greenhouse gas emissions established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in which no considerable actions are taken globally to slow the rate of climate change.

  “The four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) used by the IPCC represent climate futures that range from the lowest-emissions scenario of RCP 2.6 to the highest-emissions scenarios of RCP 8.5,” says Blythe. “In our paper, we highlight the decline associated with the RCP 8.5 scenario, which is the worst-case scenario and often referred to as business-as-usual because it is considered by many to be the most likely of the four scenarios.”

  She says the implications for human suffering are “huge,” and calls it another example of climate injustice, since “the majority of these countries contribute next to no greenhouse gases.”

  But those most directly affected will not be the only people feeling the impacts, says Blythe and her co-authors.

  “Even if you live thousands of kilometres inland like we do in Niagara, if you’ve got a can of tuna in your cupboard, there’s a good chance it was caught in the tropical Pacific,” Blythe says. “Everyone is going to feel the negative impacts of climate change on tropical fisheries — not just people who live in the tropics.”

  Blythe, who grew up in St. John’s, Newfoundland, knows all too well the extent to which collapsing fisheries can be felt.

  “When the North Atlantic cod stocks collapsed, I was 11,” she says. “I can remember the damage it wreaked on people and communities throughout the province. Looking back, I think watching the collapse of the cod, followed by the collapse of livelihoods and economy, must have fuelled my research interests in the close connections between people and oceans.”

  The paper demonstrates why it is crucial to anticipate these scenarios and work now to devise possible solutions.

  “When people think about food and the climate crisis, we tend to think about droughts and shortages in staple crops like corn, wheat and rice,” says Blythe. “Our paper points out that there are looming food — and associated social and political — crises associated with oceans and fisheries. Oceans are a critical part of the climate conversation that are often overlooked.”

  The paper, entitled “Climate change, tropical fisheries and prospects for sustainable development,” is available to read for free until Monday, Aug. 17.

  Jessica Blythe, Assistant Professor in Brock University’s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, is available for media interviews.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca or 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock expert reflects on responding to policy challenges amid COVID-19 pandemic

  Monday, August 10, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 10 August 2020 – R0122

  From the moment the global pandemic shut down communities across Canada, Kate Bezanson could anticipate the severe effects the closures would have on women and children, “like a slow-moving train coming towards us,” as she describes it.

  “Many Canadians were called or pushed out of the labour market because their sector shut, but women in particular because childcare and schools shut,” says Bezanson, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in Brock University’s Faculty of Social Sciences. “The consequences of that are going to be massive, and it remains unclear if the childcare sector will be able to recover.”

  Though the specific circumstances of the pandemic were unprecedented, it wasn’t the first time Bezanson had witnessed an economic crisis firsthand. In the 1980s, her family lived in Latin America at a time when a massive debt crisis led to economic policy choices that gutted social infrastructure. As a young teen, she saw the detrimental effects on the families around her.

  She never forgot it.

  “What I couldn’t articulate at the time but became what I was determined to later study was how and why certain kinds of economic strategy bear with disproportionate severity along lines of existing social inequality — and always affect children,” Bezanson recalls. “In Peru, the effects were especially acute among Indigenous peoples and African-Peruvians.”

  Ever since, her scholarship in international development studies, Canadian political economy, gender, social policy and constitutional law has always come back to determining how — and, just as importantly, when — policy can most effectively help families not only survive, but thrive.

  Seeing the need to mobilize quickly, Bezanson began to monitor and interpret social and labour market data as soon as it became available and consider questions about the best solutions for the short term, restart and recovery.

  Within three weeks of schools closing in March, she and a team of colleagues had produced “From Stabilization to Stimulus and Beyond: A Roadmap to Social and Economic Recovery,” a policy document outlining four key areas of focus — social solidarity, care work, federal leadership, and social and built infrastructure — and providing recommendations to solve both short- and long-term challenges associated with the pandemic.

  The document was published April 6 and summarized in First Policy Response shortly after. Bezanson and her colleagues produced opinion pieces to reach a broader audience and were soon called on for multiple interviews with the Toronto Star, CTV News, The Hill Times, the National Post, and Huffington Post, among other venues.

  Four months later, a chorus of researchers and journalists continue to call on governments to take swift action.

  “I am deeply fortunate to work with tremendous scholars and practitioners across Canada with expertise in care, economic, and social policy, including especially my Brock colleagues June Corman, Andrea Doucet, Simon Black and Kendra Coulter,” Bezanson notes.

  “We have a long way to go, but it is clear that short and long term policy choices will make the difference between a strong and sustainable economic recovery and a gender regressive one that is stalled and hampered by women’s labour market decline or exit,” says Bezanson. “Childcare investment is a good bet for short-term economic stabilization, medium-term stimulus spending leading to job growth and long-term gross domestic product (GDP) expansion.”

  Though Bezanson never set out to be a spokesperson for the issue, she concedes that if talking about it in the media generates conversations that could help guide policy decisions — well, she’s here for it.

  “I’ve always felt a responsibility to translate our work for broad public consumption, and hopefully, for policy consumption,” Bezanson says. “I care about good policy and its mechanics, and if it helps draw attention to the complexity of the issue and the imperative of getting this right, I’m happy to sit down and have a chat.”

  Whenever she can, she steers those conversations toward the supports and stimulus needed for meaningful results.

  “Childcare is, in lots of ways, the magic lever for the kind of fair economic system that I think we in Canada aspire to, but have not achieved,” Bezanson says. “It behooves us to think not just about how we respond in the short-term, but also about how we build strong public policy that gets parents to work and gets kids into care and learning in ways that are safe and sustainable.”

  “If our policy legacy out of this pandemic is that we can do that, we will have done a good job,” Bezanson says.

   

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases