The aquaculture sustainability continuum – Defining an environmental performance framework

Estimating the magnitude and sustainability of aquaculture’s environmental impacts is challenging. A lack of quantifiable performance data on sustainability is limiting the industry’s ability to demonstrate the potential benefits of aquaculture as it plays an essential role in the future supply of seafood. Environmental Indicator Sets (EISs) have emerged as tools to express the sustainability of complex ecological systems. The intent of this work was to harness the collective expert input reflected in the EISs of global certification and ratings schemes to provide new tools to further define and advance the quantification of sustainable aquaculture. Every environmental indicator from four prominent schemes was analyzed and categorized by their level of application (site- and resource-level) and by their mode of action (status, control and risk). Impact-specific parameters were defined (Impact, Resource, Target, Limit Reference Point (LRP), and Recovery Timeframe) and used to develop a 0–100 performance scale for key environmental impacts. The resulting two-dimensional categorical-performance frameworks represent a formalized way to reflect on the different approaches of the certification and ratings schemes. Performance comparisons between schemes were avoided but the analysis indicates there is an opportunity for the different approaches to be considered complimentary. The novel parameters proposed here, particularly the LRP, highlight the incongruence between the common definitions of sustainable wild caught and farmed seafood. As such, the present work serves as an orientation point for further discussion on the quantification and ongoing development of sustainable aquaculture, anchored on the existing content of established aquaculture certification and ratings schemes.