In 2020, total global catches in inland waters were 11.5 mn tonnes, a decrease of 5.1 percent from 2019. As with marine capture production, fishing operations in inland waters were severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020, and this was compounded by the decline in China’s catches. Despite the decrease in 2020, inland water catches remain at historically high levels and only marginally below the highest levels of 12.0 million tonnes recorded in 2019.
The long-term rising trend in inland fisheries production can partially be attributed to improved reporting and assessment at the country level. Nevertheless, many of the data collection systems for inland waters are still unreliable, or in some cases non-existent; furthermore, improvements in reporting may also mask trends in individual countries.
Equally important, many countries do not report catches for inland fisheries, or they report only partial catches, while FAO estimates a proportionately higher amount of the total catches for inland waters compared with marine waters.
For the first time since the mid-1980s, China(with 1.46 mn tonnes) was not the top producer of inland water catches in 2020 and instead the highest catches were reported by India at 1.8 million tonnes. While China continues to be one of the largest producers of inland water capture fisheries, reported catches have decreased by over 33 percent from 2.2 million tonnes in 2017 to 1.5 million tonnes in 2020. This significant decrease is the result of recently introduced policies by China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, most notably a ten-year fishing ban in the waters of the Yangtze River, that aim for conservation of living aquatic resources, with the underlying rationale that improvements in and expansion of inland aquaculture and culture-based fisheries can meet the increased demand for aquatic food9 arising from the reduction in catches from inland capture fisheries.
With the exception of China, the increase in inland water catches continue to be driven by several major producing countries – notably India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Uganda. Most of the countries reporting declining catches represent a relatively low contribution to global production of inland water captures, although some supply important quantities to national or regional diets – in particular, Cambodia, Brazil, Viet Nam and Thailand.
The state of world fisheries and aquaculture 2022 is available at: https://www.fao.org/3/cc0461en/cc0461en.pdf