Aquaculture Standards Benchmarking Initiative
Aquaculture Standards Benchmarking Initiative
About
Benchmarking
This study - How Green is Your Eco-Label? A Comparison of the Environmental Benefits of Marine Aquaculture Standards - uses well-established methodology, refined by the 2010 Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), to determine numerical scores of environmental performance for 20 marine finfish aquaculture standards. While a number of previous assessments have offered important insight on the sustainability of standards, this is the first to quantitatively assess their ecological impact. GAPI does not delineate "good" versus "bad" performance. Instead, it is meant to be a tool to compare eco-labels and evaluate where they lie on the continuum of environmental performance. This study acts as a kind of Michelin guide for standards; distilling a large amount of disparate information into simple scores that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of different standards. The long-term objective is to help stake-holders - seafood buyers, fish farmers, standard setters, and policy makers - understand how standards as a whole are contributing to the ultimate goal of a more sustainable marine aquaculture industry.
Who We Are
GAPI is a project of the Seafood Ecology Research Group (SERG) at the University of Victoria. SERG is an interdisciplinary team whose research is focused on the inevitable challenges arising from the limited capacity of marine systems to produce seafood and the seemingly limitless capacity for human to consume those products. SERG uses scientific approaches to link ecological and social sustainability with regard to marine-based food production systems. The Seafood Ecology Research Group publishes broadly in both scientific and popular literature where its work serves to high-light underlying drivers of contentious seafood conservation debates.
The Pew Marine Finfish Aquaculture Standards Project advances the development of precautionary, science-based environmental standards for the conduct of marine finfish aquaculture. The Project supports the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI) as a cutting-edge approach to assessing the industry's ecological impacts and enabling a thorough comparison of performance among finfish species and producing countries.
