Developing novel socio-environmental indicators and management tools for a sustainable aquaculture
Aquaculture has grown rapidly worldwide in the past decades and will continue to grow to satisfy the rising food demand of an increasing world population. To match this growth in a sustainable way, several environmental as well as social challenges must be dealt with, including increased pollution, spreading of diseases and escape of farmed fish. The perceptions caused by conflicts of interest between different users of the coastal areas (i.e. recreational fishing, tourism, other industries) must be addressed as well.
The AquaAccept project engages experts in several disciplines (biology, ecology, economy, sociology and computer sciences) to suggest solutions for the development of the aquaculture industry in agreement with society’s views and the best use of environmental resources. Novel environmental indicators in aquaculture will be developed, to monitor the ecosystem status. The social acceptance for aquaculture will be studied to explore user-groups’ priorities and potential conflicts of interests and comparative studies will be performed in Norway and Ireland. The environmental and social findings will be merged in an innovative on-line application (WEB-GIS) in order to evaluate spatial and/or temporal interactions existing in a specific marine coastal area.
Funded by
The Norwegian Research Council