CGIAR Initiative: Resilient Aquatic Food Systems for Healthy People and Planet <p class="ql-align-justify">Aquatic&nbsp;foods are an&nbsp;important and growing component of the global food system and provide benefits to all five CGIAR&nbsp;Impact&nbsp;Areas&nbsp;(Figure&nbsp;1). These realized and potential benefits are, however, threatened by multiple stressors, including:&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">&nbsp;</p><ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Overharvesting of wild aquatic food stocks and poor governance of aquatic commons, leading to marginalization of traditional and indigenous&nbsp;fishers;&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Inequities in supply-chains,&nbsp;including from&nbsp;competing demands for aquatic foods in globalized markets<span style="background-color: inherit;">i</span>&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Vulnerabilities of coastal and riparian communities and aquatic ecosystems to climate change<span style="background-color: inherit;">ii</span>&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Degradation and destabilization of aquatic ecosystem productivity, biodiversity and carbon-sequestering functions arising from pollution, land use change, and competition for water, space and resources<span style="background-color: inherit;">iii</span>,<span style="background-color: inherit;">iv</span>;&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Aquatic animal diseases that destabilize production&nbsp;-&nbsp;and antimicrobial resistance<span style="background-color: inherit;">v</span>;&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Supply chains inefficiencies<span style="background-color: inherit;">vi</span>&nbsp;and disruptions from COVID-19<span style="background-color: inherit;">vii</span>, natural&nbsp;hazards&nbsp;and political and&nbsp;economic&nbsp;instabilities<span style="background-color: inherit;">viii</span>,<span style="background-color: inherit;">ix</span>;&nbsp;and&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Underinvestment in breeding aquatic animals for improved growth, feed conversion efficiency and climate resilience<span style="background-color: inherit;">x</span>,<span style="background-color: inherit;">xi</span>.&nbsp;</li></ul><p class="ql-align-justify">&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">Investing in effective aquatic food system (AqFS) governance, informed by research, can address these threats by eliminating the key systemic challenges facing the sector, offering transition pathways to a more just, nutritious,&nbsp;healthier, lower-carbon, and climate-resilient food system<span style="background-color: inherit;">xii</span>,<span style="background-color: inherit;">xiii</span>.&nbsp;We have identified, from 30&nbsp;years of CGIAR work on&nbsp;AqFS&nbsp;and extensive review and consultation (Sections 2.3., 2.4. and 2.6.),&nbsp;<strong>five systemic challenges</strong>&nbsp;that must be tackled to build the resilience of aquatic food systems and realize their full&nbsp;<span style="background-color: var(--clrGrammarErrorHighlightBg,#EAEEFF); color: var(--clrSquiggleHighlightTextColor,#000000);">potentials</span>&nbsp;in delivering a triple win for nature, people and climate (Section 5). These are:&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">&nbsp;</p><ol><li class="ql-align-justify">Lack of data (or access to it) has curtailed informed policy and investment decision making, resulting in undervaluation of and underinvestment in the sector by both public and private sectors (WP1);&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Power asymmetries characterize current relationships/partnerships in&nbsp;AqFS. Partnerships with farmers often fail to consider the interests of stewards of&nbsp;the aquatic&nbsp;commons. Partnerships also don’t cross over into wider food systems and ocean-economy policy spaces, leaving&nbsp;AqFS&nbsp;actors marginalized in development programs and “blue economy” processes (WP2);&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Aquatic foods have great potential to enhance water productivity, provide nutritious food, income and employment opportunities, contribute to climate change mitigation and restoration of land-water systems – but are often overlooked in water resource management&nbsp;– both a lost development opportunity and an existential threat to wetland livelihoods (WP3);&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Genetic improvement programs in agricultural research have focused on crops and livestock and there has been limited investment in the development/promotion of farmed fish varieties with the potential to minimize environmental impacts, reduce GHG emissions and increase profitability for small-scale farmers (WP4); and&nbsp;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">While there are many potential solutions to&nbsp;AqFS&nbsp;challenges and innovations to seize opportunities, these have not been scaled because national Agricultural&nbsp;Innovation Systems (AIS) don’t extend to aquatic foods and the AIS approach hasn’t been much used in the&nbsp;AqFS&nbsp;(WP5).&nbsp;</li></ol><p class="ql-align-justify">&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">There is an order-of-magnitude underinvestment in solutions-focused research in aquatic foods, relative to&nbsp;other&nbsp;major components of the global food system<span style="background-color: inherit;">xiv</span>,<span style="background-color: inherit;">xv</span>.&nbsp;resulting in a range of promising institutional and technological innovations that have not yet been scaled. Here we propose a systems-science informed research program that uses five levers of change – data-driven decision-making, novel cross-sectoral partnerships, integrated land-water-foodscape planning, productivity-enhancing technologies, and innovation laboratories – to drive change in the sector while building the capacity of national innovation systems.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p>