The Afghanistan aquaculture and fishery sectors - A foresight outlooks

Abstract

Aquaculture systems and technologies are growing industries in many countries with high environmental and socio-economic advantages. Afghanistan, a landlocked country in South Asia with diverse geographic and ecological features, reported the lowest fish consumption rate (just above 2 kg per capita). After conflicts and instability in Afghanistan, aquaculture and fisheries sectors revived slowly, followed by a rapid production and demand increase in the last four years. However, Afghanistan can demonstrate with a long history of fishery and agriculture productions in the past, but the post-conflict and stability efforts are minimal. Therefore, Afghanistan's aquaculture and fisheries sectors are conventional and require more effort to study and propose viable solutions aligned with today’s technological and sustainability requirements. Adequate and historically documented information about Afghanistan's aquaculture and fisheries activities are pretty limited. This study covers previous aquaculture initiatives, establishes a thematic review of the current situation based on little available information, and follows by a foresight outlook of the future trends. Besides, it presents the essential factors associated with production-efficient aquaculture and fishery systems in light of economic and production performance indicators. These indicators are briefly discussed that contribute to system planners and practitioners in decision-making and optimizing economic and operational efficiencies. Besides of studying Afghanistan aquaculture and fishery sectors, the basic criteria for successful small scale aquaculture are also presented that can be counted as one of the recent compositions of the subject in terms of scholarly managed information within an exhaustive insight.