The preparation and production of The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024 is a 15-month process which started in April 2023. The work was guided and supervised by an editorial board, chaired by the FAO Assistant Director-General and Director of the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Division (NFI), representing all the teams of the division, and steered by a core executive group of the NFI Information and Knowledge Management Team and a representative of the FAO Office of Communications.
The editorial board met regularly to design, develop and refine the structure and content of the report, then to review progress and address emerging issues brought by the core executive group. Based on the agreed structure, different senior editorial board members were assigned the leadership of a thematic section. Most contributions were prepared by FAO authors, including from FAO Decentralized Offices, in collaboration with external experts where appropriate (see Acknowledgements, p. xii). The work of the editorial board benefited from wider consultation among the FAO teams in charge of the FAO flagship publications.
Between April and June 2023, thematic section leaders coordinated proposals for a wide range of topics from the officers in the division, in consultation with officers from other FAO divisions and FAO Decentralized Offices. The proposals were reviewed by the editorial board to refine the outline ensuring it addressed current and emerging issues. The working outline took into consideration how ongoing FAO undertakings reflect Blue Transformation in action and align with the outcomes of high-level global and regional events and initiatives as well as concrete achievements on policies, norms and standards, technical innovation, partnerships and results at regional and country levels.
The longstanding Part 1 on world review, status and trends has benefited from improved data collection methodology, tools and analyses and has been extended to cover the regular monitoring of the SDG 14 indicators under FAO custodianship. Part 2 sets the scene for reporting and demonstrating Blue Transformation in action in global and regional fora, but also on the ground. Part 3 addresses outlook and contemporary issues, complementing the other two parts to inform stakeholders and to provide guidance to policy- and decision-makers in charge of fisheries and aquaculture. Following on from the 2022 edition, this report includes an executive summary, which covers the entire publication, and an expanded glossary. For the first time, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture features infographics to illustrate the key messages and executive summary.
In June 2023, a summary was prepared for each section and subsection, with inputs from section leaders, and revised based on feedback from the editorial board. The summary document was submitted to NFI management, then to the FAO Deputy Director-General for approval in July 2023. This document formed the blueprint guiding authors in the drafting of the publication.
Part 2 and most of Part 3 were drafted and edited for technical and language content between August 2023 and November 2023. Part 1 and the section on projections in Part 3 were drafted and edited between 1 January and 1 April 2024, because they are based on FAO’s official fisheries and aquaculture statistics, which only become available upon annual closure of the thematic databases in which the data are structured. The process requires careful collation, cross checking, revision and validation. In the absence of national reporting, FAO makes estimates based on the best data available from other authoritative sources or through standard methodologies.
All parts were reviewed by a subgroup of the editorial board including managers of the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Division. In addition, Parts 2 and 3 (except projections) were submitted in December 2023 to a panel of three external experts covering respectively aquaculture, capture fisheries and value chains for their review and recommendations (see Acknowledgements, p. xii).
Based on an agreed schedule, the finalized English drafts of The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024 were submitted in batches to the Language Branch for translation into FAO’s other five official languages and to the Publications and Library Branch for copyediting, layout and processing.
Recent developments in fisheries and aquaculture have been accompanied by a major expansion of the associated terminology necessitating its thorough review to ensure coherence throughout the report. The glossary prepared in 2022 has been expanded for this edition, using definitions provided by authoritative sources of FAO or others. A Glossary Working Group was set up to complete this task and assist authors.
A final draft of The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024 was submitted to the Office of the FAO Deputy Director-General and to the Office of the FAO Director-General for approval.
