CERTIFICATION AND THE SIMPLISTIC INTERPRETATION OF SUSTAINABILITY

As is the case for most global industries, aquaculture companies have embraced 'sustainability' as a goal, despite a lack of clear consensus as to what this actually entails. The ambiguity of the term leads to vague aims and objectives, with even vaguer strategies for accomplishing them. A quick review of mission statements and declarations of companies, organizations, and governments does, however, suggest broad agreement that sustainability has three aspects: environmental, economic and social. Unfortunately, these statements and declarations seldom probe the relationship between the three aspects, leaving the impression that they all pull in the same direction.  It is, however, inherent in the three pillar approach to sustainability that trade-offs have to be made among the three.

One attempt to make sustainability more tangible is the use of certification schemes. The certification schemes that are used in aquaculture create third-party auditing procedures by which companies can be certified to have met specific standards, and on the whole seek to provide consistent and universal criteria that apply to industries across boundaries. As a private voluntary regulatory initiative, these schemes come in addition to national regulations, their existence largely being a response to the perception that national authorities lack the ability or will to regulate the industry effectively.

Despite being a clear step away from the abstract 'goals' and 'ambitions' that have dominated the sustainability discourse and the optimistic but vague labels adopted in company advertising, certification as a means to make a global industry sustainable does have its problems. The translation of the concept into specific standards is often done without a conscious discussion of what sustainability actually is, and what trade-offs among the three aspects have been made by the scheme. Collectively the certification effort has worked to foster a simplistic view of sustainability by reducing it to 'sustainable production' measured by a list of standalone indicators, and ignoring the complexity and interconnectedness of the different aspects.

Through an in-depth study of five of the major certification schemes (ASC, GlobalGAP, GAA, BRC and IFS) and their standards relevant for salmon aquaculture, this paper demonstrates how these schemes serve as a representation of the current simplistic interpretation of sustainability. This is done by mapping the indicators that make up these standards in accordance with the three aspects, and seeing how this compares with the formulations of sustainability declarations from companies, NGOs and other global organizations. As this study shows, the conceptualization of sustainability has gone from multifaceted, to becoming ever more defined as an environmental concept, thereby obscuring the need for trade-offs. By ignoring its complexity, the schemes encourage and reinforce the idea that 'a sustainable industry' really signifies 'an environmentally sustainable industry'. Through the proliferation of this simplistic understanding of sustainability, its full meaning as the balance of needs for all planet, profit and people is quickly forgotten.