welcome to the science for the public lecture series science for the public is an organization committed to bringing science information issues to the general public this is our website good evening i'm a violent step and i welcome you to contemporary science issues and innovations to night we learn how the combination of industrial fishing the international fishing trade and climate change now threaten many developing nations that depend on local fish as their basic food source although the immediate effects are experienced by nations that are often not on the media radar the long range impact will be felt by the whole world our guest is ecologist an epidemiologist christopher golden dr golden is a research scientist at the harvard t h chan school of public health and associate director of the planetary health alliance at the harvard university center for the environment he's also an appointed emerging explore for national geographic society dr goldens research is concerned with the effects of global environment on human health and he's conducted studies in many developing nations were biodiversity declines now are threatening substantial populations chris golden received his ph d in environmental science policy and management at the university of california berkeley in two thousand and eleven and he has brings to his field broader and more global perspective that's still very new in the field of public health and environment we're very pleased to welcome chris gold welcome sir thank you so much for having me i'm so delighted first of all that you're going to give us this background because we really do not get it through like the general media so we are in much need of knowing what's going on here could you tell us about the background the background in terms of the part of the old that you are concerned with and the problems in general there shore the the work that i'm doing now that focuses really on how global fish declines will have downstream effects on food security and human nutrition is global in nature it arose from a long term research program that i've been leading in madagascar so i've been working there for the past seventeen years and through my living there seeing what day to day life and circumstances are i became more and more fascinated by the subject area of how a rapidly and accelerating changing environment might have downstream effects on human nutrition and human health if that's a rather important area it is there and you can work not for a long while i haven't yet the fisheries work is quite new i've just started working on this in the past two years and i see and what we're doing is far more global in nature so we're not just working in madagascar we're working in many other places around the world we're working in places like the solomon islands bangladesh british columbia so place even a bit closer to home in several other places we're planning on future research as well you've written about the importance of fish for nutrition can you give us some information about that in these impoverished areas what is happening why is why it's fish so employer so i guess at the broadest level the importance of animal source food so fish and other types of means to human nutrition has nothing to do with protein most people here meats and they think of it as synonymous with protein that you can get everything that you need in your diet in terms of protein from a vegetarian diet ok the reason why animal source foods are important  that they deliver things like iron zinc vitamin b twelve vitamin a fatty acids certain types of nutrition that are either in low levels within tarion diets or are absent completely ok and so for those reasons it's really critical that you will have some form of animal source foods in your diet and so if you think of a context like the us we can compensate for what animal sorts of animal source would give you  having supplements or vitamin i think by having fortified or bio fortified foods by eating things like special k where they pack in everything product we also don't face the same types of infectious disease that leeches nutrition out of your body like many other people around the world are right and so in places along the kind of tropical beltre in developing countries where they don't have market access to different forms of food within their diet where they don't have them in and supplements and they're not having bio fortified or fortified foods they really rely on animal source foods to deliver those types of nutrients which we call micronutrients into their diet that's really important information and think i think i've ever come across that until it was really your material and you just alluded to this problem of deficiencies that people get under these conditions or presumably where the diet is somewhat limited and we know nothing about this could you tell us about some of those deficiencies that people do get sure so i think the main one is iron deficiency iron deficiency anemia affects more than a billion people around the world so people within the us are affected by this and even people who are consider over an irish are still not getting the proper types of nutrition and so could actually still be anemic in a place like madagascar where i work extensively pre adolescent children are children twelve and under actually around sixty percent of that population is affected by anemia and so a really massive global health burden of disease is really directed at micronutrient deficiencies does that affect their cognitive ability their ability to work as they're older absolutely so if you think about something like anemia yeah this is usually measured as the number of grams per deciliter of hemoglobin in your blood and so this is all driven in produce hemoglobin is created by having enough iron yeah inside i red blood cells what happens is if you have an average adult man will have kind of between twelve to seventeen grams of human globin per deciliter and if you lose one gram about ten percent which really isn't much if you lose one gram per deciliter of human globin that increases the chances of perinatal mortality by twenty five percent it increases the rates of maternal mortality by twenty five percent there are massive impacts on cognitive development which they have been which they've shown are not reversible so they will last twenty years into the future and so so much of the nutrition that you derive kind of in the womb and also in the first two years of life are really critical in determining your trajectory for proper health well that's that's a very substantial the other thing that you have discussed is i think things like well there's one instance of the nutritional deficiency and it's much less familiar to us anymore in developed nations because you see we have supplemental forms or the other is that parasites are apparently a big problem when you don't have decent nutrition is that true absolutely there's there's kind of two different forms of infectious disease that i think play a very large part and also determining nutritional status and these are things that are very common and prevalent within the kind of tropical and developing world and so one of those is malaria a type of infectious disease that actually can leach iron out of your blood and those severe attacks really have an important impact on your nutritional status and the other is intestinal parasites so because many of these developing nations lack proper infrastructure to maintain adequate hygiene and sanitation the prevalence of those intestinal parasites are much higher in these populations and that also can inhibit absorption of nutrition and also leach nutrients out of your bloodstream ok and then you mentioned things like zinc things that you get in very small amounts but they happen to be critical do those have long range effects too if your diet is deficient in terms of cognitive and just general health development sure this is a bit outside of my area of expertise yet but what i will tell you is that zinc is incredibly important for your overall health so they've shown that zinc deficient children are far more likely to get diarrheal disease and far more likely to die of diarrheal disease and so in terms of maintaining and supporting overall immunity and immune function yeah zinc is really one of the most critical  micronutrients him and i take it that a lot of the go back to the map in a minute but that a lot of these people live on unlike coastal areas so you're not taught you don't have an alternative like big farms or even for that matter much small farms  at risk more is that the idea so fish are very important for many of these people and so what are the things that have depleted the fish now so i'm taking it that for a very long time for generations most of the time people had adequate fish but not now as we understand what's happening let me first answer your your first point and so what you're seeing in the developing world in particular the developing world in the tropics is that people are heavily reliant on natural resources for foods and this is primarily because the market may have limited options for them to deliver animal source foods and also they prohibitively expensive and so many people who are living in the developing world and very much working in order to provide food for their family and put food on the table don't have the excess cash course to buy these more luxury items like meats right and so that financial and economic aspect is a really important dimension to understand because it reinforces existing inequalities where people who do not have access to these natural resources that we'll talk about do not have the ability to substitute that missing part of their diet with items from the market and so they are not accessing that which makes them less and less healthy which makes it makes them less and less able to work and make money which then provides less food on the table and so there's a reinforcing cycle of creating and almost exacerbating these types of inequality it's a very important thank you for bringing that up and then so we have some limitations there anyway but under the best circumstances at least the fish would be a bicycle are trisha's but things have changed evidently so sharp is happening so the  there was really to say that something that you can access freely so things that you can harvest from the forest yes from savannah from the ocean are things that don't require on occasion a significant amount of capital to access them and so if you can freely access fish because you have a robust fishery that then provides almost a free delivery of certain types of meats and nutrition and what is now facing these people in the developing world in terms of threats to their fisheries is coming i guess from three different directions and very very broad category s and one is unsustainable fishing yeah where local people are either self depleting their own nutritional resource through improper use of certain types of technologies and another form of unsustainable fishing would be industrial fishing that is done improperly that can either damage the ecosystem and the ecological web and this kind of create reductions in fish supply for local people yeah the other is climate change which is a really massively important topic here which we see kind of moving fisheries poleward as the ocean becomes more and more warm along as it becomes more and more acidic along the tropics fish will tend to migrate to their respective poles in order to avoid this kind of changing environment around them and so what we tend to see is that as fish leave this tropical belt and move further and further toward the poles it exposes this tropical belt of nations and so you can see in the dark blue that is where we anticipate fish declines to be the most significant and in the or in the countries in orange are countries that are most reliant on fish and also exist at a threshold that's very close to deficiency or deficient ok and so the combination then kind of overlap of the two of those things to say that a place is vulnerable and its people are vulnerable to malnutrition and also to say that they are having escaping the resources where fish are going to be in fewer and fewer supply that is translating into this perfect storm yeah that will make them lose access to their natural resources and then also not have proper nutrition yeah could you tell us case people can't see the names of their countries too well but just in general i see the west coast of africa sure ok so central and western africa is anticipated to feel this the most in addition to many parts of southeast asia and so places nigeria gonna all of these places are really expecting to feel this as well and this is ignoring a lot of the industrial fishing dynamics so when a place like gone in west africa they really face a lot of pressure from european fl coming in and using their industrial fishing fleets to poach or in some cases legally acquire fish but then that takes the resources away from local people from having access to those resources how far can you know these huge ships i don't know people have seen them or not but they're massive how far in do they go how much do they intrude it really depends on what type of seafood they're targeting ok and so for instance with tuna fish or ye these industrial fishing fleets will be in the high seas yes and so in terms of actually damaging the ecosystem probably not much risk unless they went into closer coastal waters in terms of severely depleting the tuna supply absolutely right when you deal with certain types of industrial fishing fleets like shrimp trawlers yeah they go to the coast and can tear up the coral reefs and can really damage that coastal environment that then has a huge impact on local local coastal populations of people in the developing world being able to access and manage their own reasons it was only then i guess that destroys whole environments whole absolutisms i should say correct so a whole lot of fish  shellfish or whatever so lot of people this is a lot of people correct absolutely ends and millions of people are very vulnerable and have no alternative is is that the idea we estimated that between eight hundred million and one point four billion people could face a new nutritional deficiency if your taste on our own we're based on our expectations of fish declines between now and two thousand and fifty are these areas subject to any of the problems associated with climate change like so you know storms for example and  surges that are so destructive as well are there things about the climate change that are absolutely so there are places within the south pacific that we are considering working that have massive issues around  clones yeah that wednesday this is really really damaging to their local coastal environments it has a huge impact on the types of fish that are available and more so in combination with other aspects of climate change so coral bleaching for example  they've anticipated that fifty percent of coral reefs will disappear within the next thirty years coral reefs in addition to being the homes for fish right major homes are also serving a regulatory function for nations where it really buffers them against storm surge coming in and so by losing the coral reef you're not only losing the fish inside of it but you're also losing that kind of protective wall that protected you from the storm surge and so there's a multitude of different types of these climate impacts that will be felt in certain nations like within the south pacific right and then soon that also this erodes a lot of the shoreline as  well so that's an additional thing there's one more thing here so the climate change is a big factor that the climate change and industrial fishing together must be the synergies between the two are massive there is another factor that you mentioned and that is the trade in fishing could you tell us a birth that shore so fish and seafood broadly is one of the most if not the most globalised commodity on earth oh really so in terms of where fish is caught and captured and the network of markets that it has to pass through before it lands on our dinner plate is truly extensive and so what we need to understand is that many of the seafood items that we might be eating are coming from potentially the waters of distant countries where are those types of fish could be critically important forms of nutrition to local people and so many of the industrial fishing fleets especially in weak governance states their ability will harvest this type of industrial fish and then only export to industrialized nations or to kind of mega cities within the developing world so and so it is not a war to the very rich exactly and so it might not necessarily be directed at the types of people who need it most and so if there isn't kind of the proper protocols and social responsibility over kind of bringing discards to local populations are making sure that a portion of the money that is generated through that market is then delivered to local people they really face this kind of nutritional dilemma they are kind of forced to give up their produce so to speak to wealthy nations and they are left with nothing i wouldn't go as far as saying forced i think unfortunately it's a bit more complicated oh i see where the nations themselves will actually sell lisas to foreign governments from the e u or right hand china cetera right to be able to fish within their waters the problem is that the benefits from selling those leases goes to the government and it's not necessarily distributed to the people down there are the burden of those decisions and the other thing is where is developed and so i called her as a technological innovation to compensate for these reductions in fish supply could be something that truly benefits the poor and the nutritionally vulnerable in the developing world but unfortunately the mass production of aqua culture is really being directed again at these mega cities within developing countries or two industrialized nations and so there isn't really this kind of nutrition sensitive policy exactly around how to distribute this production in both wild capture fisheries and farm does that have anything to rules we're not in control of industrial fishing get as far as i know either ok so where you have really high populations large populations that are extremely vulnerable and there is general loss of biodiversity everything is affected here are there any solutions at hand what would you say so i think that there are two primary solutions that i would focus our efforts on are three probably solutions that i would focus our efforts on one is that global wild capture fish apply is in rapid decline metric tons per year of mine and so we need to reform fast how we're regulating fish catch and fish supply across the globe and so i think that improvements within how we manage fisheries how we are stewards of these natural resources needs to be a primary thing that we're really focused on right now is that like an international you need an international directive not just you do but unfortunately if there is that sort of set up within fisheries to be able to address some of these concerns so look at the policy infrastructure exists convincing the stakeholders and governments to go with policies that will benefit the poor and the nutritionally vulnerable is where we need to go but unfortunately are not there yet then i ask quickly good for you go to those other two a couple of points that  this is affecting everybody to have this depletion in the fish that the thing the story of the cause here is you know in new england then it was supposed to last forever for heaven's sakes thurman was supposed to be for ever no problems but these are populations of fish that have been sorely depleted as well and so you say there needs to be regulation there there are sort of policy structures but nobody really pays attention to them how the people we will out of this i think the people pay attention but i think unfortunately as i mentioned before where fish and seafood is one of the most commodified global items on earth there is huge economic stakes and so to convince governments not to sell leases for foreign fishing fleets to or for illegal fishing not to take place there needs to be monitoring systems there needs to be engaged mint with these we governed states there needs to be  social responsibility and ecological responsibility from a developed nation perspective and none of those things are quite happening perfectly like climate sounds a lot like the climate change thing will all have a million meetings and you know nothing much happens as a result of that and so you have governments dragging their feet and so on ok so you talked about some other aspects of the solutions the two other types of solutions is in compensation for the wild capture of fish declines a truly promising development was this innovation with aquaculture of farming fish and i think for the first time in human history last year people consumed more farmed fish than wild capture fish which is astonishing nobody expected ten years ago for farm farming fish to take off as much as it has and so i think that that is incredibly promising the technology around it is very sophisticated and can be done properly what we need to do now is again on a more policy level create sensitive policies around awkward culture where it is distributed and able to flow to markets that will support the poor and nutritionally vulnerable if we ask you something about that but there has been criticism that the are too crowded perhaps that they're getting the wrong type of food they are now subject to parasites that they didn't have a problem with before and then there is the question of whether nutritionally is as good as the wild one i am asking you all of the above i think the evidence and terms of nutritional equality between wild versus farmed is still out for decision and i think that there is some limited evidence that shows that wild capture salmon for instance is a better nutritional resource then farmed salmon but again i think this is heavily dependent on how it is far a and i think that it could get there ok with appropriate technology so i don't want to sound pessimistic that we can't get there i just think that there are some hiccups right now ok i think that also it really depends on the environment of the farming and so people are also concerned about the state of our wild oceans yes so in terms of contaminants mercury is cetera these are things that are not isolated to farming conditions these are things that are everywhere and so i think we need to simultaneously clean up both systems and produce a healthier food supply in both systems so k so that's an important thing that you bring up that i hope people are aware we have many problems with polluting the oceans hard to believe that we have done substitute job in basically a generation  of these huge platter the plastic is affecting fish and wildlife in the ocean and so on but all these contaminants that sure mention as well but basically you think it could be done you could have farmed fish to provide adequate supplies if you did right i don't think that that will ever be a silver bullet so everything of course but i think that in combination with the stewardship of the wild resources could serve as an effective solution and so that brings me to my last point of intervention which would be the creation of marine conservation area marine protected areas and the development of improvements in fisheries regulations and so all of these are really key and this really goes back to my main body of work which is trying to create synergies and co benefits between environmental conservation and human health and i think that this is such a great example of how we can combine the two of them and so really the theory of change here is that if we create a marine protected area that has some sort of regulation around what can be when it can be cut how much of it can be it could rehabilitate the local fish stocks there might at the beginning have a shock to the system where people are not able to access enough resources but over time the rebounding and rehabilitation of that fish stock could then serve as a sustainable delivery mechanism for nutrition i think and so i think that that is a really beautiful prospect of simultaneously protecting biodiversity of maintaining adequate fish stocks but also creating the sustainable delivery mechanism of nutrition are there any examples of this these conservation areas that's familiar on lead of course and then have brought her back successfully some of the populations that were very much depleted but other absolutely impuls the place that is nearest and dearest to my heart madagascar are the president announced about two years ago that he would triple the area of marine protected areas in the country and so there are great examples of where that has been happening effectively within madagascar and really throughout most coastal nations on ah but they are doing it in two different forms one is more a marine national park guess where it's truly off limits and no take zones and then there are examples where they have deep volved the power of management to local communities and there's many names for that in different places but in madagascar they call them locally managed marine areas or l m m a and they are what happens is that the community takes over quote unquote ownership over their coastal area and with that devolution of rights they then take pride in their own resources and taking care of them and sustain them in a in a better way the community in charge of making these decisions with something that directly benefits it's very interesting i think when done properly it is as beautiful as you say it is i think the problem is that it's always more complex yes than it all has to be for and so many local people believe that they already were the owners of these resources and why is the government in a position to give them ownership over something that is already there yes and so there  vulnerable populations around the world all at the same time very complex kinds of things affecting their nutritional base then do you think though it can be stabilized is that sounds like your message and you have tons of experience so do you think that it is possible to bring stability back i do absolutely i think that there is certainly hope particularly with this case of looking at yes they have shown in many places around the world there was a beautiful med analysis done of many many different examples of marine conservation areas around the world and they showed that if you protect these types of areas in the way that i just described over the course of five to ten to maybe fifteen years those fisheries can rebound and that might seem like a long time scale but it really is quite a fast short it's really quite fast and so when you think about that it really could be this important way and a very hopeful way of acting right and also it's i thought you were going to say maybe a whole generation or something but  suggestions about how to implement how do you get governments to act one of the main reasons why i'm doing this project is to get governments to act to get these multilateral organizations to act because i think a very compelling way to get people to care about human well being and the environment is to pair of the two together because the folks who don't really care about the biodiversity argument might care about the poverty human well being and  argument and vice versa well there's another interesting thing in here is that we all have a responsibility these are people that could be they get what you're seeing this all the time people are really under terrible stress and it's something that could be avoided so we sort of have a responsibility i hope that you get the message across we are in dire need of this and i hope that people will be motivated to help in some way i don't know why we can do directly but we need to be well informed in the first place dr golden thank you very much and i'm hoping that you'll come back and tell us about the bushmeat issue as well that you have worked on i think it's madagascar especially but it's another interesting area that we really have very little information  much for the fish story thank you absolutely thank you for having me