Applying a water-energy-food nexus approach to seafood products from the European Atlantic area

By 2050, food production's environmental impacts are projected to double without intervention. Crucial changes in dietary habits are needed, and seafood can be pivotal. The focus in calculating burdens using life cycle assessment (LCA) indicators has shifted towards exploring interconnections within the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus. Addressing this evolution, this manuscript has applied an innovative methodology to calculate a WEF nexus index (WEFni). This index seamlessly integrates both environmental and nutritional profiles across diverse case studies involving fisheries, aquaculture, and processing production systems in the European Atlantic area. The results showed that when it comes to fishing, purse seine fishing obtained the highest score (99%). For the aquaculture activities, seafood (>73%) obtained better results than fish farming. About processing treatments, freezing (>79%) has lower environmental loads than canning. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was carried out according to a caloric- and edible-based functional unit as well as the modification of the weighting factors assigned to each footprint, in which important variations were reported in the WEFni of most case studies. Consequently, although the methodological guidelines supporting the WEFni have great potential to serve as an ecolabeling tool, certain aspects need to be re-evaluated. On the other hand, it could be interesting to include the potential biodiversity loss, as well as other socioeconomic indicators, with the purpose of considering a more sustainability criteria. Finally, the contribution of this paper to the food industry literature is of paramount importance, as it represents a first step towards holistic assessments and easy-to-understand ecolabelling processes that can promote sustainable production and consumption.

This research was supported by the EAPA_576/2018 NEPTUNUS project, supported by Interreg Atlantic area. Some authors belong to CRETUS and the Galician Competitive Research Group (GRC) ED431C 2021/37, co-founded by Xunta de Galicia and FEDER (EU). E.E.B. is funded by Xunta de Galicia PhD Grant (ED481A-2021/164). A.C.D. and P.Q. acknowledge FCT/MCTES for the financial support to CESAM (UIDB/50017/2020 + UIDP/50017/2020 + LA/P/0094/2020), through national funds, and to the research contracts CEECIND/02174/2017 and CEECIND/00143/2017, respectively.