Edward Hugh Allison

Background: Nature-based solutions (NbS) are defined as actions that protect, conserve, restore, and sustainably use natural or modified ecosystems. These actions aim to deliver environmental services, enhance biodiversity, and support societal well-being. NbS are increasingly promoted across a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, coastal management, and civil engineering. However, despite being introduced almost twenty years ago, NBS appear not to have been widely and explicitly adopted in aquaculture production systems policies and practices, arguably because there is little evidence of their efficacy in improving environmental outcomes and production. This systematic map therefore seeks to address the primary review question: What evidence exists in the literature on reported environmental outcomes associated with nature-based approaches in aquaculture? To answer this question, the study will identify, collate, and characterize the available evidence on nature-based approaches applied within aquaculture systems. Methods: This systematic map will follow a structured evidence-synthesis approach to identify and characterize literature on nature-based solutions in aquaculture. Comprehensive searches will be conducted across established scientific databases using carefully developed search strings, and these will be complemented by targeted grey literature searches across specialist aquaculture and NbS platforms, as well as Google Scholar. Retrieved records will be screened at title, abstract, and full-text levels against predefined eligibility criteria. Studies will be included if they focus on aquaculture systems, examine interventions framed as or consistent with NbS, report outcomes related to environmental performance, socio-economic value, or policy relevance, and are based on empirical evidence from peer-reviewed or credible grey literature sources. Data from eligible studies will be extracted and summarized descriptively, followed by a narrative synthesis to identify thematic clusters, geographical patterns, and gaps in the evidence base. The outputs will provide a structured knowledge base to inform researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to expand the application of NbS in aquaculture.

Blue food -aquatic organisms fished or farmed in marine and freshwater areas, including fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants -make critical contributions to nutrition, livelihoods, and economies, and can have lower carbon footprints than other animal-source foods. While blue foods are increasingly discussed as part of climate change mitigation and adaptation, climate change also affects the feasibility, performance, and equity outcomes of blue food strategies, and evaluations of such strategies remain limited. Through an expert-driven, iterative process, we review 22 strategies through which blue foods may contribute to climate mitigation or adaptation, consolidating evidence on their potential effectiveness, feasibility, and associated trade-offs and synergies across sustainable development outcomes. The reviewed literature provides relatively good evidence for the mitigation potential of Decarbonizing production practices and Dietary shifts, and for adaptation benefits associated with Species and gear shifts. However, evidence across strategies remains uneven, highly context-specific, and in some cases limited. Trade-offs with sustainable development outcomes, risks of maladaptation, and a persistent bias in research and policy towards technological innovation over systemic and societal change complicate evaluation and implementation of blue food climate strategies. No single strategy emerges as transformative in isolation. Rather, findings suggest that contextappropriate portfolios of strategies, implemented in combination, may offer complementary and synergistic benefits. Further research and evaluation are needed to substantiate claims about the transformative potential of blue foods, including systems-based analyses and targeted assessments of individual strategies, with particular attention paid to capacity-strengthening measures and equity in design and implementation.

Blue (aquatic) foods’ current and potential role in improving whole-of-food system outcomes, across health, environment and livelihoods, is gaining recognition in research and policy. The concept of ‘nutrition-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture’ has been articulated to highlight this potential. In practice, many challenges remain in translating these high-level aspirations into implementable nutrition-sensitive actions within the aquatic foods sector. This study aimed to understand how food and nutrition can be embedded in fisheries and aquaculture management. Additionally, it investigates what supportive conditions are required outside these sectors to ensure success. A broad range of proposed approaches to support nutrition-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture were identified through a literature review and interviews with key informants in the Asia–Pacific region. These proposed approaches included maximising production to increase food supply, prioritising nutritional quality of products accessed through food environments, and increasing consumer demand. Barriers and opportunities to implementing these proposed approaches were also reviewed. They included the lack of incentive mechanisms to produce more nutritious but less profitable species; the impracticability of promoting increased consumption of aquatic food products where people have limited physical and financial access; and, for small-scale producers, trade-offs between consuming and selling nutritious food. Enabling mechanisms included the improved availability of information on nutrient content of aquatic species; theoretical advances in nutrition-related management and decision-making; and increasing alignment between fisheries and aquaculture sectoral policy and nutrition and food policies. The findings support use of a wider food systems approach, rather than an aquatic foods production focus, to enable coordination on multiple fronts to harness synergies and negotiate trade-offs between food security, resource conservation, and economic goals. This approach could generate greater impact through a range of potential levers that to date have been largely neglected.

While increasing seafood consumption may help address micronutrient deficiencies and metabolic disorders, evidence supporting this recommendation in the Indian context remains limited and inconclusive. Using the nationally representative cross-sectional 2019–2021 National Family Health Survey dataset, we investigated the association of fish consumption frequency with anaemia and metabolic disorders (overweight/obesity, hypertension and hyperglycaemia) among adult men (aged 15–54 years) and women (aged 15–49 years) in India. A control function (CF) method was employed to examine the association in individuals who consumed fish daily and those who reported consuming fish daily/weekly. The analysis was restricted to non-vegetarians (who reported ever consuming egg, fish or meat). Overall, 86·9 % of men and 74·7 % of women were non-vegetarians. CF analysis revealed that both daily and daily/weekly fish consumption were associated with a reduced risk of anaemia among both men and women. Daily fish consumers exhibited increased likelihood of overweight/obesity (men: β : 0·405, 95 % CI: 0·074, 0·735, P : 0·017; women: β : 0·248, 95 % CI 0·125, 0·370, P < 0·001). Conversely, daily/weekly fish intake was associated with a reduced risk of overweight/obesity in men ( β : −0·041, 95 % CI: −0·069, −0·013; P : 0·004). Daily/weekly fish consumption was associated with a reduced risk of hypertension and increased odds of hyperglycaemia among men. Fish consumption demonstrated a potentially protective relationship against hypertension in women, regardless of how often they consumed fish, while also being associated with a higher prevalence of hyperglycaemia. Indian adults can improve their health by eating more fish, which can help fight anaemia and may also reduce overweight/obesity and high blood pressure.

The interaction between climate change and agricultural intensification contributes to biodiversity loss, while widespread degradation of land and water undermine food system productivity. Agroecological principles aim to guide food systems transformation but rarely refer to water or aquatic foods, which are critical elements of nutritious, sustainable and equitable food systems. Here we examine the principles and frameworks presented in agroecological literature and suggest rephrasing of six of the principles to incorporate water, aquatic foods and land- to seascapes. We recommend three cross-sectoral actions that leverage aquatic features in agroecosystems to facilitate more effective transition pathways towards sustainable food systems.

Sustainable development aspires to “leave no one behind”¹. Even so, limited attention has been paid to small-scale fisheries (SSF) and their importance in eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Through a collaborative and multidimensional data-driven approach, we have estimated that SSF provide at least 40% (37.3 million tonnes) of global fisheries catches and 2.3 billion people with, on average, 20% of their dietary intake across six key micronutrients essential for human health. Globally, the livelihood of 1 in every 12 people, nearly half of them women, depends at least partly on small-scale fishing, in total generating 44% (US$77.2 billion) of the economic value of all fisheries landed. Regionally, Asian SSF provide fish, support livelihoods and supply nutrition to the largest number of people. Relative to the total capture of the fisheries sector (comprising large-scale and small-scale fisheries), across all regions, African SSF supply the most catch and nutrition, and SSF in Oceania improve the most livelihoods. Maintaining and increasing these multidimensional SSF contributions to sustainable development requires targeted and effective actions, especially increasing the engagement of fisherfolk in shared management and governance. Without management and governance focused on the multidimensional contributions of SSF, the marginalization of millions of fishers and fishworkers will worsen.

Global nutrition targets remain unmet, as over half of preschool-aged children and two-thirds of non-pregnant women of reproductive age worldwide suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. Climate change poses a growing threat to global food and nutrition security, but existing climate risk assessments often overlook the critical roles of both terrestrial and aquatic nutrient-rich foods that are vital for dietary diversity and micronutrient supply. In this study, we introduce an innovative framework that integrates data on future climate extremes, nutrient supply dependencies, and diet-related climate vulnerability. Our comprehensive analysis assesses nutrition-sensitive climate risk to five essential micronutrients across production systems. By mid-century (2041–2060), we estimate that 75% of calcium, 30% of folate, 39% of iron, 68% of vitamin A, and 79% of vitamin B12 produced in primary food products will face frequent climate extremes (at least every other year) globally. Nearly fifty countries are projected to face high domestic climate risk for two or more micronutrients during this period, with ten countries facing high risk across all five. We outline distinct climate risk profiles to offer data-driven entry points into strategies for bolstering the resilience of micronutrient supply chains and advancing progress toward global nutrient targets in the face of a changing climate.