Towards Responsible Aquaculture and Sustainable Fisheries have been posing severe threats in recent years.
The fisheries sector has been contributing substantially to the economic, social and nutritional benefits in most of the Asian countries, largely as an important avenue towards rural development and poverty alleviation. In India, the sector is recognized as a powerful income and employment generator to over 14 million fishers and fish farmers, majority of whom live in over 4,100 coastal villages,
besides hamlets along major river basins and reservoirs. The sector provides quality animal protein at comparatively lower cost to the people, ensuring nutritional security to a great extent. Further, contributing to an export earnings of over US$3.4 billion and sustaining a number of subsidiary industries, it has been playing a major role in stimulating and strengthening the economic growth of the nation. However, several issues, viz., overfishing, depletion of fish stocks, impact of climate change on biodiversity and abundance, disease in aquaculture, trade related issues, etc. In order to meet the projected demand of 12.70 million metric tonnes of fish by 2020 at an estimated annual consumption growth rate of 3.5%, it is necessary for the sector to grow at 5.4% annually. All these call for an integrated strategic planning at the national level and it is time to take stock of our achievements, capabilities, challenges as well as opportunities. The Asian Fisheries Society, Indian Branch (AFSIB) with its Headquarters at Mangalore, since its inception in 1986, has been providing a platform for discussion at the national level on issues related to research, development, education and policies by organizing Indian Fisheries Forum (IFF) every three years in different parts of the country. The now renamed 10th Indian Fisheries and Aquaculture Forum (10ifaf), with the theme 'Towards Responsible Aquaculture and Sustainable Fisheries' will be hosted by the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources at Lucknow during 12-15 November, 2014. It would provide an unique platform for scholarly interaction for sustainable development of the Fisheries and Aquaculture sectors through greater synergy among the stakeholders and planning strategies for capture fisheries and aqua-farming to build higher levels of resource and environment sustainability, nutritional security and economic profitability.
