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Best Environment Practice (BEP), health, monitoring and regulations, codes of conduct
Introductory presentation: Prof. H Ackefors, Sweden
One of the roles of regular monitoring in aquaculture is to reveal problems
before they result in serious impacts to the environment and/or cause catastrophic
consequences in production. Improved techniques and methodology arising from
BEP can lead to a reduction in environmental impacts. By identifying the effects
of aquaculture production on the water column and the sediments, either by traditional
techniques or by whole system monitoring and assessment which looks to the carrying
capacity of an area, it may be possible to achieve a system which monitors the
integrity of the whole system and is capable of evaluating the health of the
system, in a way that is compatible with the interests of all the stakeholders
involved. Once producers realise that their production capacity is close to
breaching not only the environmental limits but also the carrying capacity of
their farm, then a mutually beneficial solution could be found whereby environmental
health is established by the use of BEP, or at least BATNEEC. Carrying capacity
needs to be linked to the effects of the impacts and to what degree impacts
are acceptable.
Countries have their own standards for environmental monitoring
and their own preferred methodology and technology used to achieve these standards.
Thus, attempts to kick-start and maintain BEP in any country, have to take into
account that there is necessarily a two-tier monitoring system already in operation,
i.e., universally accepted types of monitoring, recommendations and regulatory
measures carried out at the national level and generally accepted practice carried
out at the regional and individual farm level.
Good environmental practice, linked to a realistic set of regulatory measures, could make sustainable aquaculture
a real possibility because of the demonstrable benefits to all the players in
the different conflicting interest groups. A description of the benefits derived
from BEP could lead to the establishment of a code of conduct which might also
provide a measure of quality control and thus lead to penetration of the global
market.
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