DEXiAqua, a Model to Assess the Sustainability of Aquaculture Systems: Methodological Development and Application to a French Salmon Farm

Samuel Le Féon,Théo Dubois,Joël Aubin,Michele Costantini,Nouraya Akkal-Corfini,Jacopo Bacenetti,Christophe Jaeger,Aurélie Wilfart

doi:10.3390/su13147779

Abstract

Aquaculture is increasingly considered a major contributor to the growing demand for worldwide seafood production. Sustainability is becoming a key issue for aquaculture systems, with the objective to produce seafood with lower environmental impacts and that is economically viable and socially fair. In the context of the SIMTAP project, a multi-attribute model called DEXiAqua was developed. DEXiAqua uses the DEX method to assess the sustainability of aquaculture systems via indicators from technical domains and reference methods (i.e., life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social life cycle assessment, and emergy accounting) selected and organized by the partners in the SIMTAP project. The DEX method consists of building an attribute tree that is organized to characterize a complex problem. Qualitative or quantitative indicators are measured at the end of each branch of the tree. The value of each indicator is translated into a qualitative scale for the associated attribute via threshold values. Weighted utility functions are used to build attributes from sub-attributes until the attribute of overall sustainability is reached. DEXiAqua was applied to a case study of salmon farming in France, which illustrated its ability to assess overall sustainability and help identify ways to improve the production system by identifying environmental, social, and economic hotspots. More case studies are required to apply DEXiAqua to a variety of systems with technical and contextual differences, which could result in changing attribute weights to adapt it better to different contexts.

Highlights

In response to the growing world population, with 9 billion people estimated by2050 [1], demand for seafood is expected to increase in the near future
This article describes a robust method to assess the sustainability of aquaculture systems with special emphasis on integrated multitrophic aquaculture (IMTA) systems
It is based on combining parameters, including life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), social life cycle assessment (SLCA), and emergy accounting results, using DEXi freeware

Summary

Introduction

In response to the growing world population, with 9 billion people estimated by. 2050 [1], demand for seafood is expected to increase in the near future. From 1960 to 2010, the world demand for edible fish nearly doubled from 9.9 to 18.6 kg per capita per year, and it should continue to grow. Demand could reach 21.5 kg per capita per year by 2030 [2]. 10 years and do not seem sufficient to respond to this increase in demand. Demand has been supplemented with aquaculture, whose production has increased by 7.5% per year since 1970 [2]. Current aquaculture systems are required to be more sustainable to better manage financial, technological, institutional, natural, and social resources [3]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion