Volatility and vulnerability in Mexican fisheries and aquaculture: Enhancing resilience via public policy

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the fisheries and aquaculture sector, and public policies are needed to mitigate it. Nevertheless, the lack of information makes it challenging to generate an adequate response. It is relevant to study the sector's response to past shocks to generate the elements to react to present and future shocks. We present a historical analysis (2006-2014) of the Mexican fisheries and aquaculture sector to detect the most vulnerable and volatile resources concerning their resilience to shocks. For this, we propose a proxy indicator of the beta coefficient used in the finance context to calculate the risk premium of an asset. In this case, we measure each resource's variation compared to the whole fishery sector's variation. Several shocks were detected, corresponding to different events (i.e., economic, climatic, disease outbreaks). The most notorious is in 2009, explained by the H1N1 outbreak with the combined effect of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. A key finding is that fisheries and aquaculture's volatility and vulnerability to economic shocks are highly variable and vary according to the resource and the shock's nature. As such, support measures will likely continue to be broad in their approach. A overarching policy shift that is perhaps necessary to mediate future shocks' impact is to support the fisheries sector's diversification. As well as building the resilience of production, this can also extend to include diversification of the supply chains, markets, and distribution systems. Diversifying the sector holistically could help safeguard against future shocks.

Automated summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the fisheries and aquaculture sector, highlighting the need for public policies to mitigate its effects. The sector's response to past shocks show a high variability in vulnerability and volatility to economic shocks, emphasizing the importance of supporting diversification as a policy shift to mediate future impacts.