Ussif Rashid Sumaila is a professor of ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (formerly known as the UBC Fisheries Centre). He is also appointed with the UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs.
He specializes in bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing and the economics of high and deep seas fisheries. 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 and Hong Kong and the South China Sea. He received his Bachelor of Science degree with honours from Ahmadu Bello University University in Nigeria and received his PhD from Bergen University in Norway.
He won the 2017 Volvo Environment Prize and was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019, and the SSHRC Impact Award in 2021.
Sumaila’s work on international fisheries subsidies has been influential in the Doha Round of WTO negotiations concerning subsidies and countervailing measures. Expert advice from Sumaila has been sought by the White House, United Nations, Asian Development Bank, and Parliament in Canada and the United Kingdom. Sumaila has also been featured in the popular documentary End of the Line.
With Solving-FCB, Dr. Sumaila will examine whether and how resolving illegal,
unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in the Gulf of Guinea would enhance the resilience of marine ecosystem services for sustainable livelihoods under climate change.
