Scholars@Duke
John Virdin

John Virdin

Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Division of Marine Science and Conservation
Marine Science and Conservation
john.virdin@duke.edu
Box 90328, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Designing gender-inclusive data systems in small-scale fisheries.

Journal Article Ambio · February 2026 Gender equality is a ubiquitous national goal, yet sectoral gender data gaps to support this goal persist. These gaps are both structural and sexist, concealing women's contributions and impeding actions that would strengthen livelihoods and economic devel ... Full text Cite

Identifying and closing gaps in corporate reporting of ocean impacts

Journal Article Nature Sustainability · November 1, 2025 As ocean industrialization accelerates, corporate transparency is increasingly seen as critical to improve governance, yet little is known about how firms disclose their impacts on marine ecosystems. This study addresses that gap through a content analysis ... Full text Cite

An analytical approach to explore prospects and limits of nutrition-sensitive fisheries governance under climate change

Journal Article Environmental Research Food Systems · September 1, 2025 Researchers and policymakers increasingly recognize the contribution of aquatic food systems, such as fisheries, to food security and nutrition. Yet governing fisheries for nutrition objectives is complicated by the multiple overlapping processes that shap ... Full text Cite

Assessing the Financial Services Sector’s Leverage in Advancing a Sustainable Ocean Economy

Report · June 6, 2025 Prior research suggests that the global financial services sector could influence the sustainability of the ocean economy, particularly with better information on companies’ externalities (Barbier 2023; Sumaila et al. 2021; Jouffray et al. 2019). This brie ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Illuminating the multidimensional contributions of small-scale fisheries.

Journal Article Nature · January 2025 Sustainable development aspires to "leave no one behind"1. Even so, limited attention has been paid to small-scale fisheries (SSF) and their importance in eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Through a collaborative and multidimensional ... Full text Open Access Cite

A global assessment of preferential access areas for small-scale fisheries

Journal Article Npj Ocean Sustainability · December 1, 2024 We provide the first global assessment of the status of preferential access areas (PAAs), a relatively understudied policy tool to govern small-scale fisheries. We find 44 countries, most of them of low or low-middle income, have established a total of 63 ... Full text Cite

Transdisciplinary Doctoral Training to Address Global Sustainability Challenges

Journal Article PLOS Sustainability and Transformation · 2024 Link to item Cite

Fishing for subsistence constitutes a livelihood safety net for populations dependent on aquatic foods around the world.

Journal Article Nature food · October 2023 Fishing for subsistence constitutes a livelihood safety net for poverty, malnutrition and gender inequality for populations dependent upon aquatic foods around the world. Here we provide global estimates showing that almost the same amount of small-scale f ... Full text Cite

Initial Assessment of Gender Considerations in Plastics Policy

Report · August 31, 2023 Globally, women are disproportionately burdened and impacted by the harmful effects of plastic across the life cycle of products. These burdens vary across cultural, socioeconomic, and political contexts, and based on how women engage with plastic, but bro ... Open Access Link to item Cite

2023 Annual Trends in Plastics Policy: A Brief

Report · August 31, 2023 In the first annual update of Annual Trends in Plastics Policy, Nicholas Institute researchers find that plastics policy enactment continues to surge and was not negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, researchers found more than 300 additio ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Editorial: Emerging challenges and solutions for plastic pollution

Journal Article Frontiers in Marine Science · January 1, 2023 Full text Cite

Spatial analysis of aquatic food access can inform nutrition-sensitive policy.

Journal Article Nature food · December 2022 Aquatic foods are critical for food and nutrition security in Malawi, but it is unclear which populations benefit from different aquatic foods and what factors shape food access. Spatial analysis of food flows across value chains from Lake Malawi to domest ... Full text Cite

Voluntary commitments made by the world's largest companies focus on recycling and packaging over other actions to address the plastics crisis.

Journal Article One earth (Cambridge, Mass.) · November 2022 Plastic pollution has caused significant environmental and health challenges. Corporations that contribute to the make, use, and distribution of plastics can play a vital role in addressing global plastic pollution and many are committing to voluntary pled ... Full text Cite

A transdisciplinary approach to reducing global plastic pollution

Journal Article Frontiers in Marine Science · October 28, 2022 Full text Cite

A snapshot of the economic benefits from foreign bottom trawling in coastal West Africa: A mutually-beneficial trade in services, no winners or extractivism?

Journal Article Fish and Fisheries · September 1, 2022 Large-scale fishing effort in the waters of tropical and lower income countries is predominantly driven by ‘distant water fishing fleets’ often owned by companies based in a small number of countries and has been associated with a range of negative environ ... Full text Cite

The evolving global plastics policy landscape: An inventory and effectiveness review

Journal Article Environmental Science and Policy · August 1, 2022 Governments worldwide are increasingly adopting public policies, laws, and ordinances to reduce plastic pollution. To date, studies have not analyzed the content of, and trends in, these policies. Employing a content analysis and literature search, we set ... Full text Open Access Cite

Combatting illegal fishing through transparency initiatives: Lessons learned from comparative analysis of transparency initiatives in seafood, apparel, extractive, and timber supply chains

Journal Article Marine Policy · April 1, 2022 Over the last two decades, efforts to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing have led to an expansion of initiatives to enhance transparency across the seafood industry through international agreements, national government regulations, a ... Full text Cite

Annual Trends in Plastics Policy: A Brief

Report · February 23, 2022 In 2020, the Plastics Policy Inventory and accompanying report, 20 Years of Government Responses to the Global Plastic Pollution Problem, were published, providing a baseline for the trends in government responses to the plastic pollution problem, as well ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Proximity to small-scale inland and coastal fisheries is associated with improved income and food security.

Journal Article Communications earth & environment · January 2022 Poverty and food insecurity persist in sub-Saharan Africa. We conducted a secondary analysis of nationally representative data from three sub-Saharan Africa countries (Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda) to investigate how both proximity to and engagement with s ... Full text Open Access Cite

How does the World Bank shape global environmental governance agendas for coasts? 50 years of small-scale fisheries aid reveals paradigm shifts over time

Journal Article Global Environmental Change · May 1, 2021 Small-scale fisheries are becoming a global social and environmental concern. The contribution of marine small-scale fisheries to global food security and coastal livelihoods, coupled with the significant challenges they face, has attracted increasing atte ... Full text Cite

The Ocean 100: Transnational corporations in the ocean economy.

Journal Article Science advances · January 2021 The ocean economy is growing as commercial use of the ocean accelerates, while progress toward achieving international goals for ocean conservation and sustainability is lagging. In this context, the private sector is increasingly recognized as having the ... Full text Cite

Corporations and plastic pollution: Trends in reporting

Journal Article Sustainable Futures · January 1, 2021 Research on pathways to reducing plastic pollution often concludes that greater action is needed by the private sector. Yet the private sector is not a monolithic or homogeneous entity. We compiled a novel library of 2,317 corporate reports from the world' ... Full text Cite

Plastic pollution solutions: emerging technologies to prevent and collectmarineplastic pollution.

Journal Article Environ Int · November 2020 As plastic waste accumulates in the ocean at alarming rates, the need for efficient and sustainable remediation solutions is urgent. One solution is the development and mobilization of technologies that either 1)prevent plastics from entering waterways or2 ... Full text Link to item Cite

Assessing the Potential for Transferability of Access Rights to Enhance Sustainability in Large Pacific Tropical Fisheries

Report · September 8, 2020 This study was conducted in order to identify options for the transferability of fishing rights in the context of Pacific Island commercial longline and purse seine tuna fisheries (where the rights are denominated in units of fishing effort, i.e., fishing ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Changing the narrative on fisheries subsidies reform: Enabling transitions to achieve SDG 14.6 and beyond.

Journal Article Marine policy · July 2020 The World Trade Organization (WTO) is in the final stages of negotiating an agreement to prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies, thereby achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.6. An effective agreement should be viewed as an opportunity for natio ... Full text Cite

20 Years of Government Responses to the Global Plastic Pollution Problem: The Plastics Policy Inventory

Report · May 15, 2020 Plastic pollution in the ocean is a global problem that requires cooperation from a wide range of groups (e.g., governments, producers, consumers, researchers, civil society). This study aims to synthesize the policy response of governments to the global p ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Catching industrial fishing incursions into inshore waters of Africa from space

Journal Article Fish and Fisheries · March 1, 2020 Small-scale fisheries contribute substantially to the sustainability of coastal communities by providing livelihood and economic opportunities and ensuring food security. However, their geographic range of operation overlaps with that of industrial fisheri ... Full text Cite

Blue carbon conservation in West Africa: a first assessment of feasibility

Journal Article Journal of Coastal Conservation · February 1, 2020 The loss of blue carbon ecosystems results in significant levels of carbon emissions and decreased supply of other ecosystem services. West Africa contains approximately 14% of the world’s mangrove area but despite 25% of coverage loss between 1980 and 200 ... Full text Cite

Analysis of Policies Related to the Protection of Coral Reefs

Report · August 15, 2019 This analysis identifies at least four potential pathways by which international policy responses can help coral reef states address local drivers of reef loss and enhance coral reef resilience (and potential for survival) in the face of climate change: Ma ... Link to item Cite

West Africa's coastal bottom trawl fishery: Initial examination of a trade in fishing services

Journal Article Marine Policy · February 1, 2019 Many states attempt to increase the economic benefits generated from their fish resources through foreign fishing arrangements that can be characterized as trades in fishing services. This paper provides a first assessment of the net economic benefits in a ... Full text Cite

Toward a Blue Economy: A Pathway for Sustainable Growth in Bangladesh

Report · June 14, 2018 This report aims to synthesize current theory and practice of the blue economy concept to govern economic activity linked to the ocean, and to provide a framework for the Government of Bangladesh to analyze its potential. ... Link to item Cite

Mapping the global distribution of locally-generated marine ecosystem services: The case of the West and Central Pacific Ocean tuna fisheries

Journal Article Ecosystem Services · June 1, 2018 Ecosystem service (ES) maps are instrumental for the assessment and communication of the costs and benefits of human-nature interactions. Yet, despite the increased understanding that we live a globalized tele-coupled world where such interactions extend g ... Full text Cite

Contribution of Fisheries to Food and Nutrition Security: Current Knowledge, Policy, and Research

Report · April 14, 2018 In the context of the recently agreed-on United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes the goal to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition, this report synthesizes the current understanding of capture fisheries’ co ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Adaptations to maintain the contributions of small-scale fisheries to food security in the Pacific Islands

Journal Article Marine Policy · February 1, 2018 In several Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs), rapid population growth and inadequate management of coastal fish habitats and stocks is causing a gap to emerge between the amount of fish recommended for good nutrition and sustainable harvests ... Full text Cite

Making sure the blue economy is green.

Journal Article Nature ecology & evolution · January 2017 Full text Cite

Tuna Fisheries: Pacific Possible Background Paper No. 3

Report · August 17, 2016 This World Bank paper outlines a best-case scenario whereby improved management of tuna fisheries allows Pacific Island countries to gain as much as US$344 million per year in additional sustainable revenues and create 7,500 to 15,000 jobs by 2040. The pap ... Link to item Cite