Environmental sustainability and footprints of global aquaculture

Abstract

While aquaculture is critical to global food and nutrition security, the fast development of aquaculture production systems has recently increased concerns about resource overexploitation and associated environmental impacts. Understanding how sustainable is current global aquaculture practice is important given its potential impacts on key sustainable development goals (SDGs). Here, for the first time, we developed a food-energy-water-carbon (FEWC) composite sustainability index (0–100) to assess the sustainability of global aquaculture across countries. Results indicate that the overall sustainability of global aquaculture is low (average score = 26) with none achieving a high sustainability score (75–100) and almost all practicing aquaculture in a relatively low sustainable way (0–50). Considering the sub-sustainability at a sector level, 80% of countries had at least two sectors among FEWC falling into the low sustainable zone (score less than 25). Regarding the environmental impacts, global aquaculture production accounted for approximately 1765.2 × 103 TJ energy use, 122.6 km3 water consumption, and 261.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. China led all countries by contributing to more than half of global aquaculture water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, followed by India and Indonesia. This study highlights the significance of cross-sectoral management and policymaking to achieve global aquaculture sustainability.