Report on management strategies for sustainable European Aquaculture. TAPAS Deliverable 4.5.

Summary

The deliverable aims to identify management and incentive strategies that facilitate sustainable aquaculture development in European countries. Aquaculture production particularly the feed based aquaculture could cause various environmental consequences. Different policy measures both obligatory and voluntary ones have been proposed to stimulate sustainable aquaculture. The most common ones are command and controls and measures that change the economic incentives for the producers. In the latest years, more and more voluntary initiatives from industry itself have appeared to promote the sustainable seafood production. This deliverable mapped the policy instruments that has been implemented to facilitate sustainable aquaculture production in selected European countries. They include France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland and Spain. Direct controls such as licensing coupled with location controls and restrictions on production (MAB) are common in these countries. Inputs and emission controls, as well as environmental monitoring are also frequently implemented. In terms of economic incentive-based instruments, penalties and fines can be found in most countries. A couple of schemes are identified to subsidize environmentally friendly practices i.e. the Norwegian OURO scheme and a Hungarian scheme. In addition, producers from several countries could benefit from specific funds that support research on sustainable aquaculture or from EMFF Operational Programmes. NGOs, industry organizations and aquaculture companies implement voluntary measures such as information campaigns, certification and eco-labelling, code of practice, sustainability reporting and more. An agent based model is developed to analyze the technology adoption behavior of individual producers and the effectiveness of the various policy measures in stimulating sustainable technology adoption in the aquaculture sector. The production area management system (the so called “traffic light system”) in Norway is used as an example for the model. Whether the production area system alone will stimulate adoption of environmental friendly technology depends on individual producer’s net gain from such practice. We do find under such system, that regulations provide additional incentives for the producer to invest in the more advanced lice treatment measures. Fines and penalties adds additional costs when the producer does not invest in the advanced treatment measures and face increased risk of for example violating environmental requirements. Thus, fines and penalties, fees for non-compliance and tax will all seem to strengthen the traffic light system by ensure the producer will invest in advanced technology and have extra good environment performance. Certificate and eco-labelling, as well as voluntary industrial initiations add additional costs for the good type of producers, meanwhile they provide extra signals to the consumers for the socially and environmentally responsible production thus provide potentials for levy higher sale price for fish produced. Therefore, they will strengthen the incentive for producers to invest in the more advanced lice treatment technology as well as other environmentally friendly production practice. In the end of this deliverable an overview of on-going global initiatives to support regional and international collaboration in sustainable aquaculture is provided. These initiatives include both top-down initiations from e.g. EU level and bottom up initiations from industrial level.