2. General background to development of the zonal aquaculture approach

Any major production industry faces challenges when it reaches scale. One solution is to isolate production units from each other and from the environment to minimise disease risk and environmental impact, but this approach has not been widely adopted by aquaculture to date because of the significant technical challenges and associated costs. However, there are a few good examples of where aquaculture sectors have taken a lead in tackling the risks through a scientifically-based planning, licencing and management process that is a partnership between commercial and regulatory stakeholders.

These systems developed principally as a response to environmental challenges and disease outbreaks. The hope is that such lessons can be shared with developing sectors before they face major problems.

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP)2 identifies

2 SFP is an international nonprofit organisation working with major seafood buyers to identify and minimise risk in global supply chains. Visit www.sustainablefish.org for more information.

these approaches as ‘zonal management’, whilst FAO has labelled them as “area management” following ‘the ecosystem approach to aquaculture’. The two approaches are very similar, with many identical components—particularly around the development or strengthening of aquaculture sector management structures. For practical purposes we are talking of the same thing and could use both terms interchangeably, but as the approaches have developed their own identities over time, we will continue to refer to zonal management in the remainder of these case studies.

The best examples of zonal management are seen in the salmon industry and were developed as a response to both chronic and acute disease outbreaks, production issues over continuous use of the same sites and continued external pressure over environmental impacts, particularly in the pioneering countries of Norway and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Detractors would certainly claim the systems are still far from ideal, but they have helped protect the environment, minimise disease impact and support the industry to flourish in a sustainable manner. SFP is using the broad model developed in Scotland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to apply to tilapia, pangasius and shrimp industries in Asia through what are known as Aquaculture Improvement Projects (AIPs). This geographic translation mandates a shift in cultures, species, capacities and systems. There certainly are challenges interpreting lessons from a relatively low farm density region to areas with almost contiguous production, and from cages to ponds, but these challenges need to be overcome in order to ensure sustainable production in all senses—for the industry, the environment and the local population. SFP is working with local aquaculture sectors in China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to strengthen the scientific advisory to support effective policy for realistic industry development and to ensure the producers themselves use better practices on farms and are organised to enable them to have a unified voice in their future.
AIPs are not about stopping aquaculture. Where industries are beyond carrying capacity, positive solutions may include the enforcement of better farm management; and better knowledge of how disease can spread should inform a better industry structure, not necessarily meaning the removal of farms. On subsequent pages we share our experiences to date in two aquaculture industries and invite other industries and regulators to the take the lead to ensure the survival and sustainable growth of their own aquaculture sectors—regardless of scale, species or system. The two case studies should be read together because the activities and outcomes contribute to overall learning, rather than being comparable.

The Five Pillars of Zonal Management

In zonal aquaculture improvement projects there are five key focus areas:
1. Effective regulation based on sound science;
2. Active producer organisations guiding the industry towards sustainability;
3. Planning, licencing and management of industry development and production based on carrying capacity;
4. The use of epidemiology and other science to minimise disease risks during planning operational and emergency phases of the industry; and 5. A feed strategy based on reducing impact and risk to source fisheries providing fishmeal.
An overarching consideration is ensuring that all documentation relating to the planning, licencing and management of the sector is readily available in the public domain; such transparency is necessary to ensure appropriate use of public resources—in this case, particularly water.
The zonal aquaculture improvement projects highlighted in the case studies included here present the work that has been completed over the last two years.
These projects are very much ‘works in progress’, able to respond to new opportunities that enable improvements within the broad zonal management framework. The main focus of the projects to date has been around pillar 2—strengthening local industries to engage in sustainable management and development.
This has taken time, particularly where many producers are small-scale. Some work has started on the core technical foci of reducing local environmental impacts (pillar 3) and disease risks (pillar 4). However, the overriding approach to facilitate the local industry to take the lead in delivering improvements, rather than a third party doing that for them, has extended project horizons and means that, whilst components are being built, there is no overall management plan either for target zones or for industry sustainable development more broadly. This longer-term view should embed a strong understanding of the improvement process with the local industry and regulators. The process is participatory in that respect, although the drive for improvement usually comes from the supply chain.
There has been some movement towards strengthening the policy development process (pillar 1), but in the two examples given there has been little specific engagement on improvements in feed (pillar 5). Feed is being tackled in other ways in SFP, principally through fishery improvement projects (FIPs) in the fisheries that supply fishmeal to the aquaculture feed industry.
They are not reported on here, but information on the projects can be found at www.sustainablefish.org.
The two project case studies have faced different challenges working with industries at different stages of development and therefore the lessons described below should not be compared, but combined to give a more complete picture and not compared.

SFP’s Approach to Reducing Risk in the Supply Chain

SFP works with retailers to identify and reduce risks in international seafood supply chains in order to improve sustainability. The main focus is around environmental sustainability, but this in turn feeds into economic sustainability and increasingly includes the social elements of sustainability. Once the supply chains are identified an assessment is made of the issues that need addressing and this is published on FishSource (www.fishsource.com). Key players within these supply chains are engaged in a range of improvement activities: Groups of major suppliers with regional sourcing needs work together to support producers, processors, regulators and scientists in countries or zones to deliver improvement projects locally.

Certification and Traceability

Zonal management goes beyond the current industry focus on farm-level certification to tackle the cumulative risks and impacts of aquaculture. SFP is working with standards to identify how zonal management can be effectively and efficiently certified. However, farm-level certification provides a reasonable proxy indicator of the engagement of producers and processors in improvement and certainly offers a closer link between buyers and producers. If an industry has a high percentage of certified farms you could expect it to be well run, but there are examples of such situations with high levels of certification where the industry and regulators are failing to tackle the shared disease risks and environmental impacts of the sector.
This is a major risk for the farms, the local economy and the international supply chain.
Zonal AIPs all require international supply chain commitment in order to help move industries forward and ensure that changes are maintained by market engagement. Within zonal AIPs there is an expectation that farms of all scales will become formally licenced, and be active participants in the development of better internal management mechanisms within industries. Therefore, as AIPs become more widespread aquaculture production should be more easily tracked through the international supply chain. Indeed, traceability should become the norm, rather than being largely reserved for certified products. But there is recognition that an increasing percentage of production is likely to stay in Asia, and SFP is already working with retailers in the region to engage in improvement projects in both aquaculture and fisheries.

Defining Zones for Zonal Management—Thinking Water Is Critical

The concept of zones or zoning is familiar in terms of identifying where would be best for aquaculture development to take place, based on criteria such as access to water, markets, infrastructure and labour.
However, there are very few examples where the location of farms or the total amount of production within such zones is determined using scientific evidence like carrying capacity or disease risk assessment. OIE (the world animal health organisation) uses the term zone to identify discrete areas for disease management and control. From a planning and management perspective this is a useful reference point as we consider the need for zonal management, which builds on basic zoning to take into account disease risks and environmental impacts to define the boundaries of individual management units (zones). Environmentally these zones would have watershed-based boundaries, butwhere watersheds are very large, e.g., the Mekong delta, administrative boundaries would probably represent the limit of control of each zone. Comparisons can be made to fisheries management, from local to highly migratory stocks. This comparison requires the recognition that aquaculture management units (zones) are based on the need to sustainably manage the shared common resource of water rather than fish. Whilst individual farms are private enterprises (like boats in a fishery) they are entirely reliant on the goods and services of the common pool resource of water (like the fish in a fishery). Rather than assessing stocks there is a need to assess disease risks and the ability of water to process additional nutrients added to the water rather than subtracted (in the case of fisheries). For the effective development and control of aquaculture national governments and industries need to define aquaculture zones in their countries using the best available science and develop zonal management institutions to ensure future sustainable production, in the same way that fisheries management exists.