“Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) Introduces Projects Funded by Walmart Foundation to Combat Aquaculture Impacts on Climate, Biodiversity, and Community Resilience”
Taking a proactive stance against the wide-ranging effects of aquaculture, the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) has revealed an innovative initiative focusing on landscape-based aquaculture. This forward-looking strategy aims to mobilize seafood buyers, processors, and farmers at a larger scale, addressing pivotal environmental and socio-economic challenges inherent in aquaculture.
Braddock Spear, the global policy director at SFP, emphasized the urgency for retailers and major seafood buyers to seek tangible solutions with positive impacts. He stressed the need to connect enhanced aquaculture production and sourcing to broader objectives, specifically targeting climate change, biodiversity preservation, and community empowerment.
SFP, with support from the Walmart Foundation, will initiate two projects within its aquaculture programs. The initial project will consolidate market demand to champion more sustainable aquaculture feed, directly confronting the substantial carbon footprint linked to shrimp and salmon aquaculture. The second project involves establishing a foundation and roadmap for landscape-scale improvement in farmed shrimp practices in Andhra Pradesh, India, in partnership with the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC).
Recognizing that aquaculture feed significantly contributes to carbon emissions, the landscape-based approach aims to engage the industry in understanding, measuring, and mitigating the environmental footprint of aquaculture feeds, with a focus on ingredients such as fishmeal, soy, and grain, which directly impact biodiversity.
Dave Martin, program director at SFP, highlighted the unprecedented opportunity to collaborate with seafood buyers and supply chains to develop initiatives around sustainable feed. The project outcome will be an industry action toolkit facilitating positive and synchronized supply chain engagement on aquaculture feed sustainability.
Presently, only around 24 percent of farmed shrimp from India carries certification. As the demand for certified products rises, there is an imminent need to address sustainability issues at the landscape level, surpassing farm-level certification. Strategies will be devised to involve smallholder farmers in enhancement and certification efforts, resulting in improved environmental outcomes and production efficiency.
SFP will collaborate with ASC and shrimp supply chains to instigate landscape-level improvements in Indian aquaculture. The primary objective is to identify farms, processors, and other stakeholders in Andhra Pradesh, ensuring verifiable progress at a jurisdictional level.
Jill Swasey, head of monitoring and evaluation at ASC, highlighted the shared commitment to promoting responsible seafood production. The partnership with SFP aims to showcase the collective positive impact by correlating on-farm enhancements with verified progress at broader landscape levels.
In April 2023, SFP and ASC formalized their collaboration through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to advance responsible aquaculture production. This agreement lays the groundwork for innovative and scalable efforts in the aquaculture improvement space.
Roy van Daatselaar, ASC Improver Programme global lead, expressed enthusiasm about collaborating with SFP on designing landscape-level improvement pathways endorsed by the market. The objective is to facilitate the sustainable transformation of the shrimp farming sector in Andhra Pradesh.
This initiative signifies a significant stride toward establishing a more sustainable and responsible aquaculture industry, effectively addressing critical challenges and fostering positive environmental and social impacts.
