WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 15 population also is rapidly depleting many non-renewable resources and degrading the world’s ecosystems. Many feel that the dire predictions of Malthus, Ehrlich and others have been merely delayed. Environmental nongovernmental organizations (eNGOs) have been and continue to be extremely concerned about the sustainability of the world’s ecosystems and its human population. The general consensus of the eNGOs is that the world’s ecological footprint has exceeded its available biocapacity by a factor of 1.3 or more. These organizations are exerting pressure on consumers, industries, and governments to conserve resources and to improve environmental stewardship. Aquaculture is an old endeavor dating back thousands of years, but it came of age in the midst of the current era of environmental awakening and is embroiled in the sustainability controversy. Stagnation of Capture Fisheries and the Rise of Industrial Aquaculture Capture fisheries have long been an important component of world food production, and the production of capture fisheries — thanks to gradually improving fishing technology — increased with the growing population until the mid-1980s (Fig. 2). Fishing pressure on wild stocks increased and by the mid-1980s overfishing of many species led to stagnation of production. This provided the opportunity for aquaculture to expand and meet the shortfall between capture fisheries and demand. Aquaculture production has increased rapidly since the 1980s, and today the amount of edible fisheries products from aquaculture is equal to that of capture fisheries and nearly 90 percent of aquaculture production occurs in Asia. Capture fisheries production is not expected to increase in the future; it may even decline because many species are being fished beyond their sustainable limits. Thus, for the global per capita consumption of fisheries products to remain at its present level, all growth in future demand must be supplied by aquaculture. Following World War II, many international aid agencies and humanitarian NGOs began programs to encourage development and alleviate hunger and poverty worldwide. Aquaculture was promoted as a way of providing food for poor, rural, farm families. Moreover, the limits of capture fisheries were predicted (Ryther 1969) and aquaculture was hailed as a potentially large and sustainable source of animal protein that could contribute greatly to the world food system (Bardach et al. 1972). The environmental community also praised aquaculture for its potential for allowing poor rural families in developing countries to use farm wastes to produce fish for their own households as well as for sale in local markets, resulting in alleviation of hunger and poverty. Aquaculture was referred to by some as the “Blue Revolution” — a term no doubt inspired by the “Green Revolution,” which applied to the development of better varieties of crops that began with Dr. Norman Borlaug’s research on diseaseresistant, high-yield wheat strains in Mexico in the 1940s and spread worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s. Environmentalists were not enthralled by the Green Revolution despite greatly increased world food production. The new agricultural technology was highly dependent upon fossil fuels, required large inputs of other natural resources, and caused many negative environmental impacts. It also favored large farming operations that were considered by environmentalists to be “industrial” agriculture; a similar association was ultimately made for aquaculture. Stagnation of capture fisheries production created a demand for other sources of fish, shrimp, and other species for sale to consumers in developed countries; large aquaculture facilities sprang up throughout the world. In the view of eNGOs, it had become agribusiness or “industrial” aquaculture that negatively impacted the environment. Moreover, use of chemicals and antibiotics in aquaculture caused fears about food safety, largescale aquaculture was thought to be marginalizing small-scale producers, social conflicts were claimed to occur in areas with large-scale aquaculture facilities by depriving local people of open access to traditional resources, and concerns over the welfare of farmed aquatic animals arose. The Blue Revolution no longer seemed so appealing to the eNGOs. Environmental NGOs and the Responsible Aquaculture Movement It is not clear exactly when the eNGOs began their effort to reform aquaculture, but several papers appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s that discussed possible negative environmental impacts of cage culture of salmon and pond culture of marine shrimp. In 1997, Greenpeace and several other eNGOs attended the World Aquaculture Society meeting in Seattle, Washington TOP, FIGURE 1. World population growth from 1750 to present with projections to 2100. BOTTOM, FIGURE 2. Total world fisheries and aquaculture production since 1960. (CONTINUED ON PAGE 16)
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