Abstract
The sustainability of aquaculture is a complex issue that can be hard to assess and communicate. Communicating it to the general public is in many ways an even bigger challenge than communicating to experts on sustainability or aquaculture. The general public's perception of the status and challenges for sustainability is important for the development of the aquaculture industry and for society at large, through its roles both as consumers and electorate, and generally in providing or denying a “social license to operate” for the industry. This paper presents the process and challenges involved in choosing and quality assuring sustainability indicators for Norwegian aquaculture, covering environmental, economic, and social dimensions. It involved a team of researchers, a quality assurance group, IT developers and designers, a literature review, a national survey, and user-testing, all to establish criteria for selecting data and indicators and how to present them, and to do the actual production. The endpoint is a web-portal with indicators currently covering 22 themes, aimed at anyone interested in the sustainability of Norwegian fish farming. The portal does not conclude if or to what degree Norwegian fish farming is sustainable, as that would require making valuation and trade-offs among different sustainability objectives. Many indicators are automatically updated, and data are only from publicly available sources and produced by the authorities or research institutions. The portal is under continuous development, with new themes and indicators, and improving spatial and temporal resolution.
Highlights
Global aquaculture production has grown tremendously over the last 6–7 decades (FAO, 2020) and is affecting economic and social conditions and the environment in many places (Gephart et al, 2020)
Public availability of relevant and trustworthy information on the impacts and management of aquaculture is essential for good governance of the industry (FAO, 2017)
The webportal presented in this article is an attempt to contribute to this for Norwegian aquaculture, covering both environmental, economic, and social sustainability dimensions
Summary
Global aquaculture production has grown tremendously over the last 6–7 decades (FAO, 2020) and is affecting economic and social conditions and the environment in many places (Gephart et al, 2020). Sustainability is a complex phenomenon that is difficult to observe directly (FAO, 1999; UNDESA, 2007), and many indicator-sets and abstract indicators have been constructed to capture it (Singh et al, 2012). Such indicator-sets can contain many indicators, like those suggested for fisheries (FAO, 1999; Anderson et al, 2015) or for aquaculture (Valenti et al, 2018). Certification schemes for sustainable aquaculture can be seen as a type of abstract indicator, based on several indirect sub-indicators (Osmundsen et al, 2020a) It seems that the social dimension of sustainability has been the hardest to grasp (Vifell and Soneryd, 2012; Hicks et al, 2016; Alexander et al, 2020)
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