The project achieved its objectives, incorporating fish into the IFPRI suite of models and undertaking a broad assessment of changing demand. Researchers now have an outlook for fish into the future in a globalising food economy, and have analysed how the trends in the fish sector will affect the poor and impact on the environment during the next two decades. The study team produced the publication Fish to 2020: Supply and Demand in Changing Global Markets, and two others: 1) Food Policy Report, Outlook for Fish to 2020: Meeting Global Demand; and 2) a policy brief, The Future of Fish: Issues and Trends to 2020 (see www.ifpri.org or www.worldfishcenter.org). These three publications comprehensively examine the changes in the fish sector, the forces driving those changes, the implications of the changes for fish consumption, production, prices, trade and the environment, and how the changes affect the world's poor.
Using a state-of-the-art model of the World Food System Fish to 2020 examines the pressing problems of fisheries in the context of changing global and national market forces. It reveals that developing countries will shape nearly all growth in the fish industry in the next two decades and describes how new technologies and improved policies in both developed and developing countries can help reduce pressure on wild fisheries; improve management of wild fisheries and raise productivity in aquaculture while ensuring its sustainability. To improve the policy outcomes for the developing countries, the study suggests that policy makers in developed countries should rationalise their food safety system for seafood imports, harmonise and modernise tariff classifications, and offer technical assistance in eco labelling and food safety to small-scale, developing-country fish exporters.
Finally, the focus of the demand side policies in developing countries should be to facilitate South-South trade, to provide public goods to assure domestic food safety, and to help ensure that in developing countries fish products reach those who, from a nutritional standpoint, need them the most.