Climate change awareness and potential risks in freshwater aquaculture sector in Türkiye: A survey-based evaluation

Aquaculture sector is vulnerable to climate change, which has adverse impacts on water resources such as floods, droughts, sea level rise, water scarcity and water pollution. In this study, climate change awareness of freshwater aquaculture producers and associated potential risks are investigated for Türkiye. A survey was applied to 257 trout producing plants out of 1440 active plants in 25 river basins in 2020. The results implied that 79% of producers mentioned their awareness of the negative impacts of climate change, where water quantity and quality was reported as the highest impact that would threat fish health. In terms of extreme weather events, floods and drought were experienced by 40% and 35% of respondents, respectively. Temperature increase poses a threat for the plant owners and affects trout production. One-third of the producers had a financial loss of €6500-30.000. There is water sharing problem for almost 40% of plants. Future concern on water allocation was higher than 70% and the rate of agricultural insurance was very low, i.e., 11%.