Laureates - Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement

In 2023 the Tyler Prize honored two champions of ocean sustainability – Dr. Daniel Pauly and Dr. Rashid Sumaila. Through their tireless dedication, they continue to recognize the importance of the oceans and the need to support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health and engage stakeholders globally to achieve this goal as envisioned by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).

Daniel Pauly and Rashid Sumaila (Photo Credit: Kim Bellavance)

Fish are an integral part of the world’s oceans, which in turn produces 50 percent of the Earth’s oxygen – and this year the Tyler Prize honors the work of two scientists protecting the ‘lungs of the planet’.

Both Laureates, long-time colleagues at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia (UBC), said they wanted to use the Tyler Prize to spread an urgent and evidence-based message: all fishing on the high seas should be banned.

“Creating no-take marine reserves is something we must do. Banning fishing in the high seas, which is the area outside the 200-nautical-mile zones of maritime countries, will create a critically-needed ‘fish bank’ for the world,” said Sumaila, who is the Canada Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics at UBC.

“If we don’t stop overfishing, we will lose marine stocks essential for food security and biodiversity, and the ocean’s ability to effectively regulate global temperatures,” added Pauly, who is the Founder and Principal Investigator of the UBC research initiative Sea Around Us.

Sumaila and Pauly have published widely on the ecological and economic effects of the proposed industrial fishing ban on the high seas, which has had support from a growing number of scientists such as Dr. Sylvia Earle. Both Laureates, who are on the Board of Directors at Oceana, have also co-authored research calling for an end to the massive government subsidies given to major fishing companies.

“A high seas fishing ban is one of the most effective ways to reverse the damage inflicted on the ocean through decades of unsustainable overfishing, mostly at the hands of wealthy Western countries,” Pauly said.

“Our modeling shows that closing the high seas would result in no loss in total global catch – just a more equitable distribution. Most commercially fished species move back and forth between the high seas and coastal areas, where they can be caught in a country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ),” Pauly said.

“Furthermore, the carbon value of the fish in the high seas is 10 times the value of fish we take each year to sell and to eat. We simply cannot afford to lose this essential ecosystem service,” Pauly said.

Sumaila added that support for a high seas fishing ban continued to grow – and that the closing of Antarctica’s Ross Sea in 2016, which created the world’s largest marine protected area – served as a valuable model.

“And more than 190 countries committed to the 30×30 agreement at the Convention of Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP15) in December – to protect 30 percent of their land and waters by 2030… so there are good signs of progress,” Sumaila said.

“But we must move faster. Overfishing increases global emergencies such as climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity – particularly for already vulnerable communities, such as Indigenous Peoples and populations in the Global South,” Sumaila said.

“Banning fishing on the high seas – it’s good for biodiversity, it’s good economically, it’s good for global food security. And it’s good for equity of distribution, because smaller countries benefit when fish come into their catchment area, instead of only China, Korea, Japan, Spain etc., taking all the fish in the high seas. There are so many good reasons to do this… before it is too late,” he said.

Chair of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, Julia Marton-Lefèvre said that 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Prize, and she is honored to bestow this historic recognition upon scientists dedicated to protecting natural resources for future generations.

“Our lives and livelihoods depend on the ocean, which covers more than 70 percent of Earth. The Tyler Prize Executive Committee recognizes Professors Pauly’s and Sumaila’s outstanding individual and complementary achievements towards the conservation of this global life-source,” she said.

“By pioneering analytical approaches and knowledge platforms to assess the global state of world fisheries, they have discovered viable solutions, offering policymakers a realistic pathway towards the sustainable management of ocean fisheries,” Marton-Lefèvre said.

On April 27, 2023, the Laureates will deliver a public presentation on their work at the University of Southern California. The following day, they will be presented with the Prize ($250,000, to be shared equally). Members of the press interested in attending should email the media contact below.

The Tyler Prize is administered by the University of Southern California.

Daniel Pauly (Photo Credit: Kim Bellavance)

Dr. Daniel Pauly

Daniel Pauly is the founder and Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia. Born in France and raised in Switzerland, Pauly studied in Germany, where he acquired a doctorate in fisheries biology, zoology and physical oceanography from the University of Kiel.

He has spent much of his four decades of research documenting the rapid decline of marine and fresh-water fish. He gained worldwide recognition for popularizing the term ‘Shifting Baselines’ – which explains how knowledge of environmental declines fades over time, leading to a misguided understanding of change on our planet.

Since 2010, he is the world’s most-cited fisheries scientist. In 1994, Pauly became a Professor at UBC’s Fisheries Centre – now the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries – and was its Director from 2003 to 2008. In 1999, he founded the Sea Around Us – a large research initiative devoted to identifying and quantifying global fisheries trends.

Pauly has researched aquatic ecosystems in Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas and developed widely used concepts and software for managing data-sparse fisheries. He is also the co-founder of FishBase.org, the online encyclopedia of more than 30,000 fish species, and has helped develop the widely used Ecopath modeling software.

Rashid Sumaila (Photo Credit: Kim Bellavance)

Dr. Rashid Sumaila

Rashid Sumaila is a University Killam Professor and Canada Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia.

With roots in Nigeria and Ghana he received his B.Sc. degree (Quantity Surveying) from the Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria), and his Ph.D. (Economics) from the University of Bergen (Norway).

Sumaila’s research focuses on bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, marine protected areas, illegal fishing, climate change, marine plastic pollution, and oil spills. The question of how to “bequeath a healthy ocean to our children and grandchildren, so they too can have the option to do the same” – is what drives his life’s work.

Sumaila has experience working in fisheries and natural resource projects in Norway, Canada and the North Atlantic region, Namibia and the Southern African region, Ghana and the West African region, Brazil and South America, as well as Hong Kong and the South China Sea. These works have made Sumaila the world’s most cited fisheries economist, natural resource economist, and ocean policy expert.