SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATION INDICATORS FOR MEXICAN AQUACULTURE

The origin of the concept of "sustainability " or "sustainable development" based in the report "Our Common Future". Its defined in three dimensions: Ecological; Economic and Social. All dimensions are equally important, influenced each other and can not be separated, so that the wide variety of productive activities regardless of its nature have allowed the development of indicators for sustainability evaluation. Aquaculture is not the exception; there are various forms of evaluation indicators and each with different settings. Do to its importance, there is a need for standardized alternatives in the assessment and evaluation of these indicators for aquaculture, for which we used the PSIR indicator system (Pressure, State, Impact and Response) to express the cause - effect between the different factors involved in the aquaculture production units to attain sustainability. In order to meet the stated objective in this paper a Critical Areas of Aquaculture Sustainability Evaluation (CAASE) and Key Success Factors (KSF) were identified by a workshop of 10 Mexican Aquaculture specialist and 10 aquaculture farmers. 32 PSIR indicators were postulated to evaluate the sustainability at the aquaculture production units (APU). 22 indicators are obtained with information that comes from the APUs, six from people near the production unit and four from secondary information sources like government institutions and official statistics.