Assessing the Economic Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Asia’s Mollusk Mariculture

Abstract

Ocean acidification is coming fast and will exert negative economic impacts on global seawater mollusk fisheries. Asia is by far the top seawater mollusk producer on Earth, therefore, it is more necessary for it to be carried out related researches than the rest of the word. This analysis is an attempt to conduct a regional assessment of the direct economic impacts of ocean acidification on Asia’s mollusk mariculture. The results show that the accelerating ocean acidification poses increasing economic risks to the industry and the total financial losses vary with the degrees of ocean acidification, from 16.08 billion USD to 71.48 billion USD, from 42.66 billion to 189.61 billion USD, and from 121.11 billion USD to 498.28 billion USD, respectively, based on a discount rate of 2%, 3%, and 4%. In addition, we define a microeconomic model to illustrate how ocean acidification affects the mollusk industry’s economy. Considering that economic losses greatly depend on policy effects, it is safe to say that effective polices can reduce the negative impacts of ocean acidification and mitigate the risks of the sudden collapse of the industry as well as the resulting social problems.