Sustainable Environment

Climate Resilient Marine Fisheries: Economics, Governance, and Sustainable Technologies

Marine fisheries link ocean ecosystems to coastal community livelihoods and food systems. Their sustainable management depends on productive fish stocks, healthy habitats, and a management system that can adapt to changing environmental conditions. Warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and marine heatwaves affect the distribution, productivity, and interactions of different species, posing challenges for fisheries assessment and management. These stresses are compounded by overfishing, pollution, and habitat destruction — problems that cannot be addressed through harvest controls alone. Sustainable marine fisheries management therefore requires approaches that integrate ecological evidence with adaptive management, environmental economics, and technology. This Article Collection aims to explore how marine capture fisheries can adapt to a changing climate while protecting biodiversity, sustaining ecosystem services, and promoting equitable use of resources.

Sustaining marine fisheries in the face of climate change is crucial for protecting biodiversity, securing food supplies, and preserving community livelihoods. Shifts in fish availability can compromise household income, food supply, and access to communally managed marine resources. Small-scale fishing communities may be especially vulnerable, facing limited funding, few alternative livelihood options, and weak institutional support. Adaptation strategies based on past ecological conditions may prove ineffective as climate change alters ecosystem characteristics, underscoring the need for timely adaptation. Yet adaptation efforts aimed at boosting immediate yield or profitability can also increase fishing effort, damage habitats, and deepen inequalities. There is a need to identify adaptation pathways that safeguard the sustainability of marine resources while delivering economic benefits and social equity. Evidence on the effectiveness, cost, and trade-offs of different adaptation strategies would help inform decision-making.

As part of the broader field of environmental resource management and food security, this Collection addresses sustainable marine fisheries in the context of climate change, bridging ecological science with economics, governance, and environmentally responsible technology. Sub-topics include the effects of climate change on fisheries and vulnerability assessment, ecosystem management, and biodiversity conservation. On governance, contributions may examine transboundary fisheries, community involvement, indigenous and local knowledge systems, and equitable access to resources. Contributions on economics may address the costs of adaptation, ecosystem services, and incentives for resource use. Contributions on technological development may cover remote sensing, electronic monitoring, artificial intelligence, climate forecasting, selective fishing gear, and emissions reduction in fishing operations. Interdisciplinary and comparative research examining environmental outcomes, feasibility, and social trade-offs is also welcome. Submissions should not focus solely on commercial performance but must link climate change to environmental sustainability and demonstrate relevance to fisheries management or policy.

Keywords:

1. Marine Fisheries
2. Climate change adaptation
3. Fisheries governance
4. Fisheries economics
5. Climate-smart fisheries

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript. Sustainable Environment accepts the following types of article: Research Article, Review Article, Data Notes, Methods, Registered Report, Brief Report.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is July 30, 2027.

Please contact Kara Roberts at kara.roberts@taylorandfrancis.com with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please select Environmental Resource Management from the list of available sections during submission. Failure to select the appropriate Article Collection or Section name can result in delays.

Guest Advisors declare no potential conflicts of interests in line with our Editorial Policies.

Dr. Hafiz M. Sohail is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Applied Economics at the College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Ocean University, China, with a Ph.D. and postdoctoral background in Energy and Environmental Economics. His research spans energy and environmental economics, green finance, sustainable development, and fisheries economics, applying econometric and statistical methods. He has published over 27 papers in SSCI- and SCI-indexed journals, accumulating more than 1,200 citations, an h-index of 12, and an i10-index of 17. He also serves as an Academic Editor at PLOS ONE and guest editor for Journal of Risk and Financial Management and Frontiers in Toxicology.

Dr. Indrė Sikšnelytė-Butkienė is an energy economist and Senior Researcher at Vilnius University and the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, specializing in energy policy, sustainable energy systems, energy security and justice, and low-carbon transitions. She holds a PhD in Economics from Vilnius University and currently leads the Horizon Europe–funded GRASS Ceiling project, alongside serving on the editorial boards of several Web of Science–indexed journals, including the Journal of Environment and Development and Discover Sustainability.

Dr. Jonathan Dale is a coastal and estuarine geomorphologist. His research focuses on the factors influencing the evolution and development of wetland restoration schemes, and management of intertidal environments more widely. In his research, Jonathan works closely with organisations such as the Environment Agency, Natural England and Natural Resources Wales. Jonathan completed his PhD at the University of Brighton in 2018, where he subsequently worked in various research and teaching roles. In 2019, he moved to Coventry University before joining the University of Reading in 2022. He has been a Council Member of the Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association since 2017.