Abstract
Aquaculture activities are embedded in complex social-ecological systems. However, aquaculture development decisions have tended to be driven by revenue generation, failing to account for interactions with the environment and the full value of the benefits derived from services provided by local ecosystems. Trade-offs resulting from changes in ecosystem services provision and associated impacts on livelihoods are also often overlooked. This paper proposes an innovative application of Bayesian belief networks - influence diagrams - as a decision support system for mediating trade-offs arising from the development of shrimp aquaculture in Thailand. Senior experts were consulted (n = 12) and primary farm data on the economics of shrimp farming (n = 20) were collected alongside secondary information on ecosystem services, in order to construct and populate the network. Trade-offs were quantitatively assessed through the generation of a probabilistic impact matrix. This matrix captures nonlinearity and uncertainty and describes the relative performance and impacts of shrimp farming management scenarios on local livelihoods. It also incorporates export revenues and provision and value of ecosystem services such as coastal protection and biodiversity. This research shows that Bayesian belief modeling can support complex decision-making on pathways for sustainable coastal aquaculture development and thus contributes to the debate on the role of aquaculture in social-ecological resilience and economic development.
Highlights
The shrimp aquaculture industry of Thailand, which accounted for 15.4% of the global aquaculture production of shrimps in 2009 [1], is a major contributor to the country’s economy, bringing in over US$ 2 billion of foreign revenues annually [2] and employing more than one million people [3]
Conventional intensive farming as currently practised Introduce Better Management Practices Fully restore the existing farm as a mangrove forest and build a closed-system in the supra-tidal zone, behind the mangrove fringe Replant mangroves on 20% of the farm pond area Replant mangroves on 40% of the farm pond area Replant mangroves on 70% of the pond area and integrate the culture of mangroves with low-density shrimp aquaculture
This paper aimed to develop a Bayesian belief network (BBN) as a decision support system for mediating trade-offs between economic development, protection of natural ecosystems and coastal livelihoods, piloted in the case of the Thai coastal shrimp aquaculture
Summary
The shrimp aquaculture industry of Thailand, which accounted for 15.4% of the global aquaculture production of shrimps in 2009 [1], is a major contributor to the country’s economy, bringing in over US$ 2 billion of foreign revenues annually [2] and employing more than one million people [3]. The introduction of intensive farming techniques in the 1980s led to Thailand becoming a world-leading shrimp producer. This shift was associated with water pollution and acidity build-up in shrimp ponds. In conjunction with poor husbandry methods, this resulted in the onset of catastrophic viral diseases and a collapse in production [5,6], prompting farmers to abandon their ponds and dig new ones further into mangrove-forested areas. Thailand’s mangrove forests were halved between 1961 and 1993, the extent to which shrimp farming alone was responsible for the loss of mangrove cover in the country remains debatable [5]
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