Year of publication 2004

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Pages 55

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Author Brugère, C.; Ridler, N. ;Fishery and Aquaculture Economics and Policy Division

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Product type Book (series)

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Series title FAO Fisheries Circular

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Series number 0429-9329 - C1001

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Edition 1

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Synopsis (short abstract) Aquaculture production is expected to play a crucial role in forthcoming decades in compensating for stagnant capture fisheries and in meeting increased demand for aquatic products. Designed to ascertain the compatibility of national aquaculture production forecasts with the global prevision of the sector's growth to 2020 and beyond, the report attempts to answer three questions: 1) Do individual countries have the ambition to expand their aquaculture sector to meet global demand forecasts, an d are their projections realistic, 2) Is the “sum” of national production forecasts compatible with global projections of anticipated requirements from the aquaculture sector? 3) What planning lessons can be learnt from examining individual country plans, and how could the process of aquaculture planning be improved? Three global forecasts (Delgado, et al., 2003; Wijkstrom, 2003; Ye, 1999) were used as a benchmark against which countries’ ambitions were assessed through an analysis of t he contents of their national aquaculture development plans. Results showed that the countries studied do wish to expand their aquaculture output and, with some exceptions, their assumptions were realistic as most governments appeared to endorse the sector’s growth. Aggregation quantitative production targets from the national plans indicated that global forecasts may have underestimated the future supply of fish food coming from aquaculture. The future expansion of Chinese aquaculture remain s critical but using a modest 2 per cent annual growth rate and without increases in food fish output from capture fisheries, results suggested that most of the demand projections for fish would be met in three forthcoming decades. Thus, aggregated country productions from aquaculture are expected to grow at an average annual growth rate of 4.5 per cent over the period 2010-2030. In terms of planning, appraisal of plans and strategies revealed a generally weak planning process as methodologies a nd procedures tended to be sketchily reported. A planning framework with issues to address is suggested with the back-up of a consensus-building technique such as the Delphi method to improve the quality of future plans and enable an evaluation of their likelihood of success, as transparency, legitimacy and agreement are key to the success of a plan.

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Language English

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Also available in:

• Spanish

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