Blue foods and climate action

Blue foods can play a key role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Though certain harvesting methods, like bottom trawling or prawn aquaculture, produce high carbon emissions, options like sardines and seaweed produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than beef and a fraction of the emissions (about 16%) that result from producing a comparable amount of chicken. Oysters and mussels even sequester carbon.
 

Realizing this mitigation potential will require urgent investments to make blue food ecosystems more resilient to climate change impacts. Today, food systems receive only about 4% of climate finance, and even less reaches fisheries and aquaculture. This underinvestment could have significant consequences, since more than 90% of global blue food production faces substantial risks from environmental change, threatening the nutrition and livelihoods of millions of people who rely heavily on blue foods. 

In collaboration with partners around the globe, the Center for Ocean Solutions has translated research on blue food emission profiles and climate vulnerabilities into policy guidance. These research and policy insights have also informed how the Aquatic Blue Food Coalition, a multistakeholder group led by the center, champions blue foods at climate policy engagements, including UN climate convenings such as the Conference of the Parties (COP).

In 2023, the team published a white paper outlining four ways to leverage blue foods to reduce emissions across the global food system, alongside a policy brief and infographic that informed discussions at COP28. In 2024, the team released guidelines for integrating blue foods into national climate strategies, including nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, and found that 43% of 194 NDC submissions from the 2020 round did not mention blue foods. To support uptake, the team hosted three regional webinars ahead of COP29. 

To make global guidance more regionally relevant, the Center has supported assessments of national blue food systems in Indonesia, Vietnam, Mexico, Ghana, and the Pacific Islands region. Case studies were presented at COP30 in November 2025, combining country-specific data on production, trade, consumption, emissions, and climate risks to identify priority mitigation and adaptation opportunities. The Pacific Island regional case study will be released in the summer of 2026.

View the Ghana case study View the Indonesia case study View the Mexico case study View the Vietnam case study