Linking climate change-driven impacts on Net Primary Production in the Atlantic and mid-century global macroeconomic scenarios

This work combines ecological and macroeconomic approaches to assess the economic costs of climate change impacts on Net Primary Production in the Atlantic Ocean by 2050. The novelty of this study lies in introducing ecological limits in the fishery sector of the Computable General Equilibrium model used for macroeconomic assessment. To control socio-economic and climate uncertainties, we include projections from three CMIP6 climate models under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Our results suggest a substantial economic loss by 2050 in Western African regions higher than 1% of Gross Domestic Product in most of the scenarios. This is the consequence of the impact on Net Primary Production and the strong increase in global fishery prices, which will affect the future economic structure. Economic losses and increases in fish prices are strongly amplified when biophysical constraints on fishery expansion are introduced in the macroeconomic model.