Quantifying climate change induced threats to wetland fisheries: a stakeholder-driven approach

Wetlands are biologically sensitive habitats and envisaged as the most impacted systems by climate change. Floodplain wetlands of West Bengal, India, are important fisheries resources and provide tremendous economic and ecological services. There is lack of long-term quantified data to assess the impacts of climate change on floodplain wetlands fisheries in India. The article presents a stakeholder-driven approach to quantify the impacts of climate change on wetland fisheries. A modified Delphi method has been used to accomplish this. The present article discusses the modified methodology and the results obtained thereof. The study identified around seven potential climate change-induced threats on wetland fisheries among which water stress (95% consensus), wetland accretion/sedimentation (85%), aquatic weed proliferation (70%) and loss of wetland connectivity (65%) are high-priority issues demanding immediate management action. These issues are expected to further aggravate in future climatic scenario.