World Aquaculture Magazine - June 2021

32 JUNE 2021 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG Recommendations fromOur Realities for Aquaculture in its NewGeographies Large-scale aquaculture has evolved substantially in the past 20 years (Naylor et al. 2021); innovations are reported globally almost every week. In addition, new ecological aquaculture production systems have arisen with newmonikers that have attracted new communities of practice that identify themselves with these innovations, not necessarily with aquaculture (Fig. 8). However, aquaculture development has serious systemic problems throughout its Asian and new geographies. In China and India, population growth, urbanization, water shortages, pollution, and the spectacular rise of their middle classes is moving aquaculture from its traditional aquaculture geographies in ricefields and pond areas into warehouse-type buildings, recirculating aquaculture systems and inland (Newton et al. 2021). Outside of Asia, aquaculture is developing in very few countries. FAO global data on aquaculture in most of the world are only fun to play with, not to use for their local context or policy-making in aquaculture (Mialhe et al. 2018). We ask aquaculture developers in most of the world outside of Asia…what good does it do to your work locally in aquaculture development to present the famous FAO figure showing the millions of tons of the different types of aquatic food systems that are dominated by carps? In-depth discussions of the local proposal for aquaculture by any observant person would point that out and also show that most of the world’s ocean food production and employment is in capture fisheries. Aquaculture has great potential in inland, freshwater areas where land tenure and water rights can be secured, management and waste treatment systems are more advanced, and governance systems are far more straightforward than for marine aquaculture (Edwards 2009, Edwards 2015, Belton et al. 2021). However, we find it unhelpful to pit the future of aquaculture as a battle for scarce resources for aquaculture as a whole vs. the mega-giant resources available for unsustainable agriculture. Once we break into camps that pit us into freshwater vs. marine aquaculture; coastal vs. offshore aquaculture; small-scale vs. large-scale aquaculture; and fed vs. extractive aquaculture, we lose our way with decision-makers. Aquaculture is the poor cousin of agriculture and will remain so in the new aquaculture geographies if we fracture more than we already are. Let’s work to develop outstanding, economically viable, social- ecological examples of sustainable aquaculture systems in all of these diverse areas and create additional aquaculture wisdom for the future. Each of these aquaculture development options has a possible future of innovations in a local context. They have possible sustainable trajectories and can also be integrated to accomplish more sustainable ways of producing aquatic proteins valuable for human health and wellness in comparison to existing, destructive, terrestrial protein systems — if any one of them received funding anywhere near the funding that goes to agriculture. Recommendation#1 Do comprehensive deep dives into data of the fisheries and aquaculture local/regional production and trade, and the competition aquaculture will face from current and projected fisheries and ocean food imports. Document where your ocean foods are actually coming from! Use market-driven aquaculture development assessments, not technology-driven aquaculture development hopes and dreams. Recommendation#2 Stop defining the future of aquaculture on the social-ecological collapse of fisheries. Join in with everyone you know to help recover fisheries at all levels. That means enhancing by all means fisheries restoration and management efforts everywhere. The many allied, mixed fisheries-aquaculture systems of capture-based aquaculture (Lovatelli and Holthus 2008), aquaculture enhanced fisheries, integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, and restoration aquaculture could change the very future of both aquaculture and fisheries (and protein food production). Recommendation#3 Aquaculture management in many of its new geographies is buried in fisheries or agriculture agencies. Many areas that have abundant marine and freshwater resources suitable for sustainable development are part of an unfortunate but growing trend— an overemphasis on “marine/coastal” as “aquaculture”—and neglect the large potentials for inland aquaculture. Such structural, institutional issues need to be fixed or knowledge and governance systems for aquaculture will remain broken, with inadequate positioning of opportunities and a lack of learning between freshwater and ocean communities in aquaculture. Recommendation#4 The FAO should stop treating the seaweed aquaculture sector as a different category, with separate tables and separate comments in different sections as this leads to a distorted view of what really constitutes the total world aquaculture and the broad contributions of aquaculture to food systems. Include seaweeds in comprehensive tables, figures, sections and chapters with the other aquaculture crops to simplify and improve the understanding of fisheries and aquaculture statistics and to avoid recurrent misconceptions about the aquaculture world. Recommendation#5 When including seaweed production in total world aquaculture production, the total extractive aquaculture is slightly larger (51 percent) than the total fed aquaculture (49 percent). At first, one could rejoice at these numbers; however, one more time, “the mean means FIGURE 8. New ecological aquaculture production systems have arisen, with new monikers and labels that have attracted new communities of practice that identify themselves with these labels and innovations, not necessarily with “aquaculture.” THE EVOLUTIONOF AQUACULTURE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE Ancient to 1970 s 1970 s to 1990 s 1990 s to today Polyculture Integrated Agriculture- IntegratedMulti-Trophic Aquaculture Farming Aquaculture System 3DOcean Farming I Integrated Aquaculture Marine Permaculture Aquaponics Aquamimicry Ecological Aquaculture Lower Trophic Level Aquaculture Restoration or Regenerative Aquaculture Conservation Aquaculture