Blue Food Partnership

Why does blue food matter?

Blue foods¹ are the most highly traded food products in the world. They are critical to global food and nutrition security and provide millions of livelihoods.

3 billion people rely on blue foods for nearly 20% of their animal protein
10 to 12% of the world’s population rely on fish for their livelihoods

Blue foods often have a smaller environmental footprint than land-based food production and are highly nutritious as shown in the image below.

With a growing world population, blue food faces increased demand and big challenges.

Global consumption of seafood has doubled in the last 50 years and the impact on marine ecosystems is high, with unsustainable fishing and aquaculture practices depleting the ocean of fish and other aquatic food species.

34.2% of fish stocks are already overfished, while a further 59.6% are being fished at maximum sustainable levels and 30 to 35% of the fish harvested is either lost or wasted. This is unsustainable, inefficient, and contributes to the fact that 8% of total global GHG emissions come from food loss and waste

Yet there are ways to build the sustainability of blue food and therein lies great opportunity.

The Blue Food Partnership aims to improve the sector’s transparency, governance and management structures so that we can reform capture fisheries, scale sustainable aquaculture, and ensure the fish we harvest is used more efficiently in line with the following policy recommendations of the Blue Food Assessment.