Governance Issues

The working group on Governance issues identified the importance and benefits of the aquaculture
zoning, siting and area management. These include:

• Ensuring aquaculture development in a sustainable and responsible manner;
• Minimizing disease outbreaks and other risks;
• Avoiding social conflicts and conflicts with other sectors; and
• Avoiding boom-bust cycles of development in the absence of good planning and management.

These aquaculture zoning and area management guidelines offer flexible and adaptable advice, for example:
• Countries differ in aquaculture development. Countries with well-developed aquaculture can use the guidelines to help set up Aquaculture Management Areas and encourage farmers to cooperate in biosecurity, environmental and socioeconomic management of their shared water resource.

• Countries new to aquaculture can use the guidelines to help identify suitable potential zones for aquaculture development and identify farm sites and levels of production within the carrying capacity of the zones.
Different levels of Government may be involved with the different steps from zoning to site selection to delineation of AMAs and setting up the governance frameworks and mechanisms for a zone, a site and an AMA. However, this depends on the existing level of government control for planning and management (whether control is centralised or devolved).

• National government is typically involved with the identification of the aquaculture zones at the national level and estimating potential production within those zones.
• Provincial or local government is typically involved with the setting up of AMAS.
• Local governments are typically involved with siting and licensing of individual farms.

The introduction of zoning, siting and area management can be made in a number of ways. It can be introduced through:

• National aquaculture policy, strategy, medium- and long-term plans;
• Aquaculture legislation, regulation or guidelines;
• National Good Aquaculture Practice guidelines or Codes of Conduct; and
• Licensing by including the requirement for farms to cooperate with neighbors within an area agreement.

Zoning, siting and area management can be introduced in a step-wise approach or all at once. Area management can start with cooperation on disease control and biosecurity and then developed further over time to include environmental, socioeconomic management, marketing cooperation and use of shared infrastructure.
The introduction of zones, siting and area management requires significant resources including staff with knowledge of the process and trained in the methodologies and use of tools, This capacity can be developed within the Government staff through training, or some aspects can be outsourced to research units, universities or service providers with the technical competence.
Zoning for aquaculture can be exclusive or integrated.
Zones can be designated exclusively for aquaculture use (e.g., Turkish case study) or aquaculture can be integrated with other sectors and uses within a zone (e.g., Scotland case study).