The aquatic frontier - managing aquatic culture environments for sustainable food production and other goods and services
An ASEM framework for scientific co-operation

1. Introduction

In the light of the rapid growth of the aquaculture industry, and bearing in mind its concomitantly growing problems (environmental conservation and safety, feed quantity and quality, animal and food health and marketing) which pose significant challenges but also present major opportunities for the future, the Ministers of science and technology of the ASEM countries (10 Asian, 15 European Union members) and the European Commission selected aquaculture as one of the priority thematic areas for future scientific co-operation at their meeting in October 1999 in Beijing.

The ASEM workshop on the challenges in today's aquaculture and research co-operation addressing the knowledge development and management necessary to meet these challenges (Beijing on 27-30 April 2002) was one of the follow-up activities to this decision, convened under the auspices of the EU's international scientific cooperation programme and through the partnership of Greece's General Secretariat for Research and Technology and the Chinese Society of Fisheries. It built on a range of successful research collaborations at bi-regional and bi-lateral levels, which mobilise intra-European and intra-Asian cooperation. It also took inspiration from the Bangkok Declaration on sustainable aquaculture adopted in 2000 in the occasion of the international conference on 'Aquaculture in the Third Millennium'.

The objective of the workshop was to develop an action-oriented agenda for ASEM scientific co-operation and to develop a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue, networking and continued coordination.

2. The Challenges and Opportunities

The Workshop discussions highlighted a range of driving forces which affect societies in Asia and Europe, though in somewhat different ways. Three broad inter-related areas of societal concerns were identified which must be addressed as a matter of priority in the context of ASEM cooperation in aquaculture and for which realistic actions for effective progress need to be identified:

1. Trade, food safety, nutritional security and quality standards
   - Trade opportunities, constraints and risks (inputs, outputs and services)
   - Maintenance/establishment of markets, market stability
   - Consumer nutrition, consumer perception of industry
   - Traceability, certification, labelling
2. Environmental sustainability
   - Biological and technical issues (husbandry, grow-out systems, health of cultured organisms, feeds and feeding technology)
   - Identification and calibration of sustainability indicators
   - Integrated assessment of production systems (monoculture, polyculture, various combinations of aquaculture with agriculture and forestry, coastal zone management, etc.)
   - Genetics, breeding, genomics and stock improvement
   
3. Social equitability
   - Support to social cohesion with particular emphasis on smallholder and barriers to entry
   - Recognition of gender issues in sustainable aquaculture
   - Explore and use consultative and participatory approaches to research and management.

In order to meet these societal objectives, and to organise ways to address them effectively, new partnerships involving societal stakeholders, public and private bodies and representatives of civil society are required. These must be supported by transparent scientific knowledge.

3. Developing an ASEM Sustainable Aquaculture Platform

• combine the environmental, socio-cultural and economic dimensions
• construct inter-disciplinary networking around the principal themes identified, but also incorporating existing networks
• build bridges between the different types of partnerships involved.

The setting up of a platform of ASEM partners from research, private sector, administration and civil society is recommended as the most suitable mechanism to mobilise the strengths of these different partners synergistically.

3.1 Concept and design of the ASEM Sustainable Aquaculture Platform

The Platform for exchange, voluntary co-ordination and joint action is an open and permanent dialogue space, where all partners interested in ASEM sustainable aquaculture can be members. This Platform is not in itself a funding instrument for scientific cooperation but an enabling mechanism for equal partners.

Singapore had laid some of the foundations by providing an issues paper to the Ministerial meeting in 1999. China and Greece have so far provided the initial co-ordination with the support of the European Commission and could continue to act as interim facilitators on the Asian and European sides, by preparing a concrete proposal for such a Platform. The role of the Platform's facilitators will be to promote the ASEM S&T Aquaculture Co-operation by initiating networks, projects, workshops, promoting private/public partnerships and supporting investment in human resources and exchange of experience, training and information.

Platform activities will be reported to a small Steering Committee consisting of leading personalities from 3-5 ASEM partner countries who will represent the diversity of the societal actors involved in sustainable aquaculture.

3.2 Funding

A clear and foreseeable action plan for the ASEM Sustainable Aquaculture Platform should be prepared in the near future by the interim facilitators with support from the Steering Group, in order to secure the necessary funding for activities. The Platform will have some fixed costs (Secretariat, offices, etc) which will be borne by the coordinators from each region, to be identified in the afore-mentioned action plan. Improved coordination among different stakeholders on the platform will lead to multiple sources of funding for various forms of ASEM Aquaculture co-operation, with particular emphasis on research and learning under the EU 6th Framework Programme, as well as sources such as national, multilateral and bilateral funds (Global Environment Facility (GEF), Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank (WB), European Investment Bank (EIB), etc).

3.3 Next step

As the next step, the Platform content and structure will be presented at the ASEM IV Summit in Copenhagen in the second half of 2002.