World Aquaculture Magazine -December 2021

30 DECEMBER 2021 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG MentalModels Amodel is a simplification of a system fromwhich we can learn something. Amental model is an explanation of how its creator thinks the systemworks. Game theory is a type of mental model that helps understand relationships and trust. Peter Senge, best known as the author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization described mental models as one of the five disciplines needed to develop a learning organization. Much of aquaculture is globally dynamic, adapting and transforming in complex social-ecological environments, especially when developing in common property resources in its new geographies. Drawing a mental model is the first essential step towards investigating a system. Too many systems thinkers run too quickly to the software. Farnam Street Media Inc. (2021) has a tool kit that features about 100 types of mental models. Figure 6 is an example of a mental model of the dynamics of transformative oyster restoration aquaculture inMaine, US. Foresight Foresight is a set of “future tools” used to create transformative spaces with stakeholders. The Innovation Leadership Board conducts trainings called “Strategic Foresight & Innovation” that uses ‘methods cards’ to find and implement ‘the next big idea’ (www. innovation.io) . Stories Galafassi et al. (2018) facilitate and create radical stories of positive futures. Pereira et al. (2018) and the “Seeds of Good Anthropocenes Project” and the “Manoa Mash-Up” have been designed to create “radical stories of positive futures in South Africa that focused on increasing the difference of these stories from the present.” Conclusions and Recommendations The UN Sustainable Development Goals will drive the future of planetary initiatives (UNGeneral Assembly 2015). More integrated, transdisciplinary ways of developing ecologically and socially responsible food, energy, water and waste systems to meet societal needs in the 21 st century will be shared globally, with transferable models emulated at both large and small scales. Global initiatives become local and vice-versa as North-South divides evaporate. The ocean will become a central part of the future of food (HLPSOE 2020). But this needs to be the “Decade of Doing.”Where do we start in aquaculture’s least developed countries? First, document where your ocean/aquatic foods are actually coming from. Do deep dives into the local/regional seafood production and trade data comprehensively and measure aquaculture development possibilities, their competition and opportunities for cooperation with agriculture, fisheries and imports. Develop market-driven aquaculture assessments, not technology driven aquaculture development hopes and dreams. Stop defining the future of aquaculture on the social- ecological collapse of fisheries. Join in with everyone you know to help recover fisheries and ecosystems at all levels. That means enhancing by all means fisheries and environmental restoration and improvement efforts, and working with the many allied, mixed fisheries-aquaculture systems of capture-based aquaculture and aquaculture-enhanced fisheries. Aquaculture is not asking for huge new areas of ocean next to coastal areas crowded with existing uses. Mostly, it’s asking for tiny “donut holes” in common property resources, but even those are controversial; so wash, rinse, and repeat the advice above on long-term participatory processes (Costa-Pierce 2021, Haggett et al. 2021). Freshwater integrated aquaculture has some of the world’s greatest potential for aquaculture development and sustainable intensification. Such land-water interactive food systems hold much potential for production increases in the existing pond and irrigation areas of Southeast and South Asia. Small increases in efficiencies could yield much greater production in existing systems. However, it is unhelpful to pit the future of aquaculture as freshwater aquaculture vs. marine and offshore aquaculture, small scale vs. large scale aquaculture and fed vs. non-fed species as per Belton et al. (2020). Land-based freshwater producers of all economic classes need more assistance and sharing of technological and social-ecological advancements that marine aquaculture is making, which could be very impactful to their future development. There is much to share, as rich countries have regions where farmers are mired in poverty that mimics those of poor nations. In Costa-Pierce (2021), I reported that Brugere et al. (2018) reviewed progress towards adoption of the FAO guidelines for an EcosystemApproach to Aquaculture (EAA) and stated that “I see no adoption of the EAA guidelines at any farm, industry, agency, government or non-governmental organization at any of the scales we had hoped to affect in the Americas, EU-27 and Scandinavia, where I have been most active over the last decade”; plus “Full development, promotion and use of the EAA as an overall foundation concept for the future of aquaculture has been virtually absent from the FAO leadership, member states, other partners in governments and industries throughout the world.”Woltering et al. (2019) give a better perspective on these comments in their seminal paper on scaling for sustainable systems change. They cite the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA 2017), who define sustainable scaling as the “wide-scale adoption or operation of an innovation at the desired level of scale sustained by an ecosystem of actors.” Cooley and Kohl (2016) Management Systems International estimate the average time for scaling a successful pilot or concept to national application is 15 years. That would mean the FAO EAA guidelines would start to be widely adopted and applied by 2025. I’m happy to report that the FAO EAA appears ahead of this 15- year schedule! At the recent FAOGlobal Conference on Aquaculture (see all of the valuable global, regional and thematic reviews at aquaculture2020.org ), one for the keynote speakers, a senior leader from the Ocean University of China, announced that China would be establishing a Center for Ecological Aquaculture. Msingi East Africa, is an independent organization committed to building industries of the future using a long termmarket systems to create 500,000 jobs across East Africa by 2030 and has prioritized aquaculture. Msingi is using the FAO EAA as one of its founding principles. The Seychelles National Aquaculture Policy stated as its vision for aquaculture that the nation would be “a small but internationally competitive, knowledge- based industry, contributing to local food security and supplying international niche markets for high-value fish products, which is guided by international best management practices in accordance with the principles of the EcosystemApproach to Aquaculture and