Aquaculture has undeniably established its crucial role in global food security, with its production largely meeting the supply-demand gap for aquatic food in the past decades. Rising aquaculture production, together with many improvements along the aquaculture value chain, shifting consumer habits, and other socioeconomic factors have contributed to doubling the average apparent per capita consumption of aquatic foods since the 1960s, even though human population has also more than doubled in the same period. In 2018, aquaculture accounted for 48 percent of the total fish1 production and 52 percent of fish available for human consumption. Aquaculture makes significant contributions to livelihoods, employment, food security, and nutrition, and this contribution is expected to continue to grow through enhanced productivity and modernization, expansion and intensification, and increasing economic and geographic access and availability to nutritious farmed aquatic products.
At the same time, to feed an ever-growing human population, expected to reach almost 10 billion people by 2050, aquaculture development needs to continue its expansion while becoming more sustainable. Recognizing that the capacity of aquaculture for further growth, and also the need to avoid that such growth comes at the cost of deteriorating ecosystem health, animal welfare standards, biodiversity loss, or social inequalities, the aquaculture sector demands new, sustainable, and equitable development strategies. The private sector will remain the main actor in aquaculture production, and substantial public sector support and strong leadership will also be necessary with input and guidance from government and civil society playing essential roles in regulating aquaculture, and in supporting and promoting citizens’ views, participation and benefits.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. The SDGs focus on the elimination of hunger and reduction of poverty and inequality in all their forms, recognize the need for innovation and business development as well as social protection, commit to promoting and facilitating energy efficiency and clean energy, and seek to increase resilience to climate change, weather and natural disasters, market volatility and political instability. They further seek to reduce the pressure of human economic activity on the natural environment by stressing the need not just for habitat and ecosystem protection, but also increased resource use efficiency, and sustainable production and consumption, thereby spreading responsibility for delivering sustainability across all economic actors. Almost all the SDGs, and many associated targets, are relevant to aquaculture development, and aquaculture can make significant contributions to their achievement. Aquaculture’s role for contributing the SDGs has not, however, been clearly identified or communicated, resulting in relatively weak inclusion in sustainability dialogues.
The implementation of existing guidance and initiatives designed to promote sustainable aquaculture (including the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) and associated Technical Guidelines, the 2000 Bangkok Declaration and the 2010 Phuket Consensus) broadly support delivery of the SDGs. The Shanghai Declaration aims to build on and expand the scope of the CCRF and previous international declarations, taking full account of global agreements of relevance to aquaculture, including the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) Declaration on Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture adopted by FAO Members in February 2021. The work of the COFI Sub-Committee on Aquaculture, including the development of Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture, is crucial in this respect. The Shanghai Declaration aims to provide guidance on maximizing aquaculture’s contribution to Agenda 2030 and its SDGs, and specifically address three key questions: i) how does aquaculture contribute to the SDGs? ii) where does aquaculture need to be in 10 years? and iii) how do we get there?
The Shanghai Declaration was first outlined and developed by an invited group of experts, informed by regional and thematic aquaculture reviews commissioned by FAO in 2020 in advance of the Global Conference on Aquaculture Millennium +20 (GCA +20). Members of its International Organizing Committee and International Programme Committee further elaborated the Shanghai Declaration, with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific acting as Secretariat while providing additional inputs. The advanced draft was posted online for comments by participants ahead of the GCA +20, which were considered in the final drafting…
Full declaration is available at:
https://aquaculture2020.org/uploads/shanghai-declaration-draft-v7.pdf