Aquaculture is one of the world’s fastest growing industries, and the fastest growing sector of the food production industry. As the aquaculture industry continues to rapidly grow, sustainability throughout production has increasingly become a top priority for producers. With aquaculture’s growth, the sector has experienced growing pains with respect to the environment and social issues. Some of these problems have been human rights violations on fishing vessels, bad labour conditions in processing facilities, conflicts over natural resources, use of hormones and antibiotics and outcompeting smallholders as the industry grows.
The objectives of the study were; establish social issues in aquaculture enterprises, determine environmental concerns in the Lake Victoria Basin, establish challenges of social responsibility and evaluate best aquaculture practices for social responsibility on sustainability of aquaculture projects. A descriptive survey research design will be adopted for the study. Primary and secondary data was collected. Descriptive analyses and findings establish pertinent social issues Table1, environmental concerns Table 2 and challenges of social responsibility Table 3. It was established most enterprises don not engage in social and environmental responsibility practices, some issues were beyond enterprise control like economic development. Recommendations; enterprises should find new ways to contribute to social responsibility and policies to guide CSR to be formulated’ to protect environment and improve the quality of life of the households in the lake basin for sustainable development.
Key words: Aquaculture, social responsibility, sustainable development, Sustainability.