A/HRC/40/56 B. Rise of aquaculture 9. The rise of aquaculture has shifted the landscape of modern fisheries, creating new potential for production and employment within the industry. Aquaculture is the fastestgrowing food-producing sector, and provides the remaining half of the world’s consumed fish and fishery products, mostly salmon, tuna and shrimp. More than 80 per cent of global aquaculture production is from small-to-medium-scale fish farmers, nearly 90 per cent of whom live in Asia.16 10. Aquaculture operations require fewer workers than capture fisheries; the most recent estimates suggest that 19.3 million individuals work in aquaculture, compared with 40.3 million in capture fisheries. However, aquaculture has created more jobs in recent decades, while employment in capture fisheries has steadily declined. Between 1990 and 2016, the proportion of fishery workers employed in aquaculture increased by 15 per cent, but decreased by 15 per cent in capture fisheries. 17 11. Aquaculture has the potential for more efficient supply chains and higher production than capture fisheries, but may pose threats to surrounding populations and ecosystems. Fish farms are associated with land grabbing and the displacement of local populations when States seek to expand intensive aquaculture operations. The conversion of agricultural land for aquaculture operations may cause farmers to lose their revenue stream, as aquaculture cannot provide alternative employment for all those displaced. C. Globalization of fisheries 12. Technological advances in storage and transportation, the liberalization of markets, economic growth in developing countries and rising local and regional demands for fish products have catalysed the expansion of fishery markets worldwide. Urban populations with greater access to diverse markets and those with higher disposable income are more likely to incorporate meat and fish into their diets. Global fisheries have thus become comprised of a web of complex, opaque and longer supply chains. Export-oriented supply chains may span thousands of miles, and involve several middlemen who handle, process and eventually sell the product. 13. As the Special Rapporteur has previously addressed, exploitative working conditions exist in global supply chains that seek to maximize outputs at the lowest economic cost and at the expense of workers (A/71/282, paras. 11-20, and A/73/164, paras. 7–9). The most common and severe abuses are reported in the harvest and processing stages of capture fishery chains, where there is a lack of adequate safeguards and accountability mechanisms. Expanding supply chains may also cause detriment to small-scale and subsistence fishers and fish farmers, who must compete with industrial fishing operations for access to resources and markets. III. Challenges to achieving the right to food for fishery workers 14. Although much attention is given to food insecurity and malnutrition, the extent to which fisheries impact the human rights of those employed in the sector, including the right to food, is often ignored. Fisheries are sources of livelihoods, sites of expression of cultural values and buffers against shocks for poor communities, all of which are prerequisites to realizing the right to food. 15. Barriers to achieving the right to food may vary among States and the specific circumstances of employment, for example whether the worker is engaged in a marine or inland fishery, in capture fishery or aquaculture, in industrial or small-scale operation and 16 17 4 FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018, p. 5; High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture for food security and nutrition, Report 7 (Rome, 2014), p. 37. For further information, see FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018, p. 5.