|
Bartley, D.M.; Brugère, C.; Soto, D.; Gerber, P.; Harvey, B.(eds).
Comparative assessment of the environmental costs of aquaculture and other food
production sectors: methods for meaningful comparisons. FAO/WFT Expert Workshop.
24-28 April 2006, Vancouver, Canada.
FAO Fisheries Proceedings. No. 10. Rome, FAO. 2007. 241p.
ABSTRACT
The global food production sector is growing. In many areas farming systems are
intensifying. This rapid growth has in some cases caused environmental damage.
In acknowledgement of the potential for adverse environmental impacts from food
production, the first session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries’ Sub-Committee on
Aquaculture recommended “undertaking comparative analyses on the environmental
cost of aquatic food production in relation to other terrestrial food production sectors”.
These proceedings include review papers describing methods for such comparisons
as well as the deliberations of their authors, a group of international experts on
environmental economics, energy accounting, material and environmental flows
analysis, aquaculture, agriculture and international development discussed during the
FAO/WFT Expert Workshop on Comparative Assessment of the Environmental Costs
of Aquaculture and Other Food Production Sectors, held in Vancouver, Canada, from
24 to 28 April 2006.
Problems in making valid comparisons arise from the differences between the aquatic
and terrestrial environments and the tremendous diversity of farming systems used in
both. The values of environmental goods and services that may be impacted by farming
need to be determined and included in comparisons. The way farms are managed will have
a strong influence on environmental impacts and costs; a well-managed farm will have
much less environmental impact and cost than a badly managed one producing the same
commodity. Comparisons can be useful for addressing local development and zoning
concerns, global issues of sustainability and trade and consumer preferences for inexpensive
food produced in an environmentally sustainable manner. In order to be useful, however,
methods to assess environmental costs should be scientifically based, comparable across
different sectors, expandable to different scales, inclusive of externalities, practical to
implement and easily understood by managers and policy-makers.
Environmental impacts can lead to environmental costs that can be incorporated into
the analysis of the financial benefits or losses of the activity to which they are related.
Environmental economists classify such costs as follows:
• private costs (cost of the damage to the activity itself, e.g. damage to production
factors);
• external costs (primarily to the environment) including the cost of abatement and
residual damages after control measures are in place;
• user costs (where future uses are compromised); and
• rehabilitation costs.
Methods for comparing the environmental cost of aquatic and terrestrial food
production systems include cost-benefit analysis, material and energy flows analysis,
human appropriation of net primary productivity, life cycle analysis, ecological footprint
analysis, risk analysis and environmental impact assessment. Comparative analysis
requires normalization of the unit of assessment and the scope of the consequences of
the activity for the environment. Because there will be trade-offs between economic
gains and environmental costs, multicriteria decision analysis methods that prioritize
benefits and costs (e.g. life cycle analysis) are useful. However, the interpretation
and communicability of these methods to policy-makers is more difficult than for
methods that produce aggregated single measures or indices (e.g. ecological footprint).
No method is robust enough to capture the full suite of environmental impacts and
costs associated with food production. Many of the methods can, and should, be used
together where information from one links or feeds into another.
A balanced picture of the environmental costs of all food-producing sectors will
lead to environmental policies that deal with the impacts of all sectors. Developing this
balanced view will require a multidisciplinary team of ecologists, economists and social
scientists working with the appropriate food production sectors. Their conclusions will
need to be communicated to:
• policy-makers to establish environmental regulations, environmental impact
mitigation measures and zoning of aquaculture/agriculture;
• farmers to plan production, understand and comply with environmental regulations
and implement good management practices; and
• consumers to make informed choices on food production and drive appropriate
policy and farming practices.
Participants discussed a variety of actions that FAO and others could undertake
to help analyse environmental costs and stressed the importance for including such
analyses in responsible aquaculture development.
|
4,221 kb 
5,657 kb