AQUA 2024

August 26 - 30, 2024

Copenhagen, Denmark

DEVELOPING ONE HEALTH SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS FOR AQUACULTURE

Richard Newton*, Wesley Malcorps, Sonia Rey Planellas, Remi Panicz, Piotr Eljasik and David C. Little

*Institute of Aquaculture , University of Stirling , Stirling FK9 4LA , United Kingdom , richard.newton@stir.ac.uk



 Sustainability of aquaculture is increasingly under the spotlight for various issues of concern to consumers, academia, NGOs and the industry. There are many trade-offs  to consider between the impact on the environment, economic opportunities, social benefits or impacts and the welfare of the animals being cultured. The One Health framework considers people, animals and the environment, but as yet there have been few advances in developing sustainability indices that can comprehensively cover the range of different issues across the One Health spectrum. Environmental indicators may be at the local level such as in Environmental Impact Assessments, as a requisite for aquaculture facilities, or from a broader supply chain perspective such as in Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). Welfare tends to be assessed continuously using Operational Welfare Indicators at the farm. Socio-economic assessments tend to be highly varied, depending on the location and context, of production and it is targeted at local, urban or export markets and if production is smallholder, corporate or some intermediate scale. These different approaches highlight the lack of consistent focus when it comes to sustainability of the aquaculture sector and any comprehensive approach to assessing the full range of sustainability criteria. Challenges remain as to the relevance and importance (weighting) of different indicators the ability to apply them to a consistent framework. i.e. from a local production or supply chain perspective and the ease to which data can be collected and analysed which would satisfy a unifying framework across the sustainability spectrum.  In this study we present the approach to applying a comprehensive sustainability index to the Norwegian salmon industry, using LCA as an initial framework along with stakeholders, co-created indicators covering global and local sustainability credential across the environment, welfare and socio-economic considerations. We piloted the index using a mixture of primary and secondary data from the Norwegian salmon industry. We found that the industry performed well in most categories, especially economic as would be expected for a mature industry. However, there were remaining concerns across a spectrum of social, welfare and environmental issues.