Welfare impact of climate change on capture fisheries in Vietnam

RESEARCH ARTICLE Welfare impact of climate change on capture fisheries in Vietnam Thi Vinh Ha NguyenID* University of Economics and Business, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam * ntvha@vnu.edu.vn Abstract Fisheries are forecasted to shrink in the tropics due to climate change. In Vietnam, fisheries are a pro-poor economic sector and essential nutrition source; however, welfares of produc- ers and consumers in the climate change context are not well understood. While most stud- ies focus on the gains or losses of total products and revenues, this paper pays additional attention to the changes in surpluses of market players in the long run. A combination of the production function, demand and supply functions, and partial equilibrium analysis is employed to measure the production and welfare impacts based on time series data from 1976 to 2018 and a Vietnam household living standards survey in 2018. The results show that relative to the present, catch yield is likely to reduce 35%-45% by mid-century and 45%- 80% by the end of the century. Consumers may lose their surplus of 7-9 billion USD (PPP, 2018) by 2035 and 10-18 billion USD by 2065 due to supply reduction, while producers may gain additional profit of 3.5-4.5 billion USD by 2035 and 5-9 billion USD by 2065 owing to a price increase. The research findings suggest that Vietnam could impose measures to limit capture effort, as set out in the Law of Fisheries 2017, without harming fisher welfare. The expansion of aquaculture could reduce the gap between supply and demand of wild fish to

mitigate consumer welfare loss; however, this impact is still ambiguous. Introduction Vietnam is a coastal country on the west bank of the East Sea, with a coastline of 3,444 km stretching from North to South and more than 3,000 large and small islands [1]. There are ample fish resources along the coast, allowing Vietnam to rank seventh in the major marine capture countries and territories. The total marine catch reached 3.2 million tons, accounting for 4% of the world’s production in 2018 [2]. Fisheries is Vietnam’s key economic sector, con- tributing 23.75% to agricultural products and 3.43% to gross domestic products [3]. Climate change impacts are witnessed in various aspects of human life and living organisms around the globe, in which fisheries are widely recognized to be affected [4–7]. Climate change directly disturbs aqua species’ growth, reproduction, migration behavior, and distribution, as it induces fluctuations in physical, chemical, and biological factors [8–12]. Indirect impacts via ecosystems include changes in food abundance, competitors, predators, and pathogens [13– 16]. Climate change leads to loss of catch revenues and profits of entrepreneurs and PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264997 April 25, 2022 1 / 20 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Nguyen TVH (2022) Welfare impact of climate change on capture fisheries in Vietnam. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0264997. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0264997 Editor: Bijeesh Kozhikkodan Veettil, Duy Tan University, VIET NAM

Received: October 19, 2021 Accepted: February 21, 2022 Published: April 25, 2022 Copyright: © 2022 Thi Vinh Ha Nguyen. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.