| Summary: | Ocean acidification, caused by the increased uptake of anthropogenic CO2, describes a change in the ocean’s carbonate chemistry. While its chemical processes are well understood, less is known about its biological and subsequently socio-economic consequences. However, there is evidence that marine organisms will be adversely affected by a decrease in pH and carbonate saturation levels. Fishery is a traditionally important economic sector in Norway but stock sizes and consequently also catch could be significantly threatened by ocean acidification. To improve the understanding of potential socio-economic consequences, I conducted a risk assessment among the 19 Norwegian counties following Mathis et al.’s (2014) application of the IPCC’s SREX risk assessment framework. The SREX framework combines information regarding hazard, exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. The results show that the northernmost counties are most at risk as high-latitude oceans are considered to be more threatened compared to lower- latitude regions. The second part of the analysis shows that particularly the southernmost counties, which engage in the harvest of crustaceans are more economically exposed due to the fact that these species are more susceptible to ocean acidification and generate a higher catch value. The results of the sensitivity related calculations show that the share of income generated from fisheries is very low compared to the total income. However, direct county comparisons highlight that the northern counties reveal a higher level of sensitivity, as the share of fishermen is substantially higher there than in most other counties. Adaptive capacity is considerably lower in the northern counties than in the other counties. Overall, the final risk assessment points out that 13 out of 19 counties face moderate to high risk from ocean acidification. My research shows that the SREX risk framework is applicable for evaluating the impacts of ocean acidification. In the case of Norway however, substantial improvements ...
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