Fishery management for food and nutrition security in Peru under a changing climate

The Humboldt Current System off Peru is one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world, and its seafood products contain high-quality protein and essential micronutrients. Yet, malnutrition is still a staggering burden for Peru. We suggest and explore fishery management aiming to increase nutrient availability for the local population as a possible solution. We empirically estimated a four fish species model with consideration of climate change and constructed a nutrient-based optimization model. This enabled us to evaluate fishery management strategies, their production potential for a number of nutrients (omega-3 fatty acids, protein, and iron) and to compare them with Peru's national nutrient requirements. We found that if anchovy is harvested exclusively for export as fishmeal and fish oil, the other three species cannot provide adequate nutrient supply to meet even one-third of Peru's national requirements. The gap between the supply from these three fisheries and the national requirements for these three nutrients is equivalent to 0.087, 1.6, and 2.93 million tons of anchovy, respectively. Including the anchovy harvest in the nutrient supply from the fisheries suffices for national nutrient security purposes. It can, however, lead to significant economic losses for the fishmeal and fish oil industries, thus highlighting the trade-offs in fishery management. Our analysis identifies options for aligning fishery management with national health policies in developing countries where nutrition intake is insufficient to achieve sustainable development goals.