The Past and Future of the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project

Climate-driven ecosystem changes are increasingly affecting the world’s ocean ecosystems, necessitating urgent guidance on adaptation strategies to limit or prevent catastrophic impacts. The Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison
Project (FishMIP) is a network and framework that provides standardised ensemble projections of the impacts of climate change and fisheries on ocean life and the benefits that it provides to people through fisheries. Since its official launch in 2013 as a
small, self-organised project within the larger Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project, the FishMIP community has grown substantially and contributed to key international policy processes, such as the IPCC AR5 and AR6, and the IPBES Global Biodiversity Assessment. While not without challenges, particularly around comparing heterogeneous ecosystem models,
integrating fisheries scenarios, and standardising regional-scale ecosystem models, FishMIP outputs are now being used across a variety of applications (e.g., climate change targets, fisheries management, marine conservation, Sustainable Development
Goals). Over the next decade, FishMIP will focus on improving ecosystem model ensembles to provide more robust and policy relevant projections for different regions of the world under multiple climate and societal change scenarios, and continue to be open to a broad spectrum of marine ecosystem models and modellers. FishMIP also intends to enhance leadership diversity and capacity-building to improve representation of early- and mid-career researchers from under-represented countries and ocean regions. As we look ahead, FishMIP aims to continue enhancing our understanding of how marine life and its contributions to people may change over the coming century at both global and regional scales.