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To date, aquaculture has not reached its full potential as a source of food, nutrition and income generation, as well as for other (e.g. technical) reasons, often due to a lack of indicators or tools to understand and assess social and economic impacts.
This is in stark contrast to the fact that interest and investment in mariculture to meet the growing human demand for (marine) food is spreading and growing rapidly worldwide.
As a result, many aquaculture efforts still have "people and policy" gaps, i.e. gaps in knowledge and available policies that use this knowledge in an integrated manner, knowledge exchange gaps between aquaculture, policy makers trying to support aquaculture development, and people who depend on aquaculture work and/or food sources.
These considerations form the starting point for this paper, which will focus in a more direct way on local (mainly coastal) communities directly involved in and dependent on marine bivalve aquaculture.
In many countries, including Asia, North America and the Mediterranean, bivalve farming remains the oldest sector of aquaculture. Our focus will be entirely on farmed bivalves, rather than the many complex systems that harvest wild bivalves around the world.
In this paper, we define "farming or production communities" as coastal communities anywhere in the world where the majority of the local population depends directly or indirectly on marine bivalve aquaculture and derives goods and services from this farming.
These could range from Norwegian coastal communities directly operating "semi-intensive" marine bivalve farms, to local communities in Panama, where most of their members work on foreign-owned farms, or to extensive mussel bottom culture for local communities in China.
The finances of individual ownership settings, responsibilities, time, and investment depend on the position (if any) in the process – who is doing the culture, running the business, taking care of health standards, doing marketing, etc.
The primary issue here is the degree of (variable) dependence on marine bivalve aquaculture, the development of dependency and the "realization" also develop in different ways, i.e. whether the producer is purely economically oriented or whether his/her motivation is a combination of traditional and socio-cultural factors.
As a result, these communities and their members vary in their degree of dependence, both for them as their primary source of income and the clean coastal waters enjoyed by paying tourists.
In general, the higher the dependence, the greater the likelihood of being shocked and the higher the responsibility people are willing to take. The identity and value of the cultural services of this activity also surfaced in different ways, which precisely illustrates the dilemma of accessing cultural services for bivalve cultivation in different global environments, and one entry point for solving this problem is to study the socio-economic types of bivalve cultivation in more detail.
While marine bivalve aquaculture has some clear and much-needed socio-economic benefits, it also competes for economic, social, physical and ecological resources, which can limit perception of seascapes and lead to environmental degradation.
The economic impact of marine bivalve culture on farmed communities can be enormous (e.g. in terms of investment, market impact, risks and harms, benefits) and its impact on society is enormous.
Oyster farming is also a major activity in Matsushima Bay, northeastern Japan, where the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 and 2018 destroyed fishing boats and oyster farms as well as sewage treatment facilities, which led to coastal pollution and eventually the spread of norovirus, leading to widespread food poisoning caused by eating contaminated oysters.
However, it is difficult to find alternative, more innovative alternatives to stop disease-causing pollution, especially when wastewater treatment facilities are dysfunctional.
discuss
The above examples clearly illustrate some of the socio-economic challenges and potential risks affecting different levels and sizes of marine bivalve aquaculture, with strong participation of local communities and related institutional arrangements, such as those related to property rights, being shaped and reshaped as part of the interaction between users/stakeholders and "their" marine resources.
Aquaculture activities can be at the centre of many different conflicts, marine bivalve aquaculture can indeed be both a source of conflict and a victim, and pollution can be a major source of conflict in bivalve farming communities.
As such, they also point to some barriers to the implementation of sustainable aquaculture, but also some avenues for potential solutions.
An emerging and promising way to achieve sustainability and recognize the positive impact of bivalve culture is certification schemes for bivalve farming, some of the aspects typically considered by bivalve certification, including land and water use, water pollution, benthic effects, impacts on biodiversity, use of antibiotics and other chemicals, and relationships with workers and local communities.
Certification schemes for bivalve aquaculture still have much room for improvement to cover all aspects related to farming activities, including consideration of the social, economic and environmental impacts of bivalve culture and management.
This also requires critical reflection on other (often unintended) consequences of certification schemes, such as bivalves that were previously available for local consumption, trade or cultural services through preferred (high retailer demand) markets for certified aquaculture products.
Directly related to the Marine Bivalve Aquaculture Certification Scheme, the reliability of tools and methods for genetically confirming the identification of bivalve species in culture is discussed, as the correct species names are not always available, and current methods and recommendations for species identification need to be reviewed.
Correct designation is important for commercial purposes and certification, as well as disease control and management, and therefore inherently affects the cultivation activities of local communities, for example, the introduction of closely related species that may produce sterile hybrids should be avoided.
The introduction and transfer of live bivalves from hatcheries and field sites around the world may involve the introduction of non-native species, diseases, parasites and harmful algae, with potential impacts on wild and farmed populations including effects on recruitment, reduced adaptation, increased competition and predation, as well as changes in genetic composition, diversity and polymorphisms.
Collect and need information on guidelines and records on the transfer of bivalves farmed in ICES countries, need to consider the potential impacts and impacts of the introduction and transfer of alien species to help minimize impacts, and guide farmers, aquaculture-dependent communities and policy makers to support policy decisions on the transfer of bivalves in farming.
Finally, there are some positive practical considerations that need to be briefly highlighted that, despite these daunting conflicts and challenges, bivalves remain excellent candidates for organic products because it does not require additional foreign feed inputs, other naturally occurring phytoplankton.
In addition, their protein content makes them an interesting option from the point of view of providing and maintaining food security for a growing world population.
In coastal life, they also play a role in ecosystem services, such as reducing nutrients in the water column and acting as carbon sinks. A oyster farm of about 1 hectare can compensate 40-50 coastal dwellers for nitrogen waste. In this way, bivalve feeding can also avoid harmful algal blooms.
The importance of these health and safety aspects to communities should clearly not be underestimated, and bivalve aquaculture operates in accordance with public health standards, such as closing waters for fishing.
Thus, the presence of bivalve aquaculture often leads to increased awareness and monitoring of environmental marine conditions. Untreated sewage cannot be tolerated, different ocean management is developed, and other harmful inputs entering local waters are regularly monitored to ensure that it maintains a responsible environmental record as the industry evolves, which again can facilitate the development of certification schemes.
Therefore, the cultivation of bivalves is not only a valuable food product, but also improves alternative livelihoods in rural areas, providing social welfare and ecological, economic, social and cultural services.
The social acceptability of bivalve culture operations can be assessed using two indicators: 1. Public attitudes towards aquaculture. This is evaluated through periodic queries, using statistical processing.
2. Assess emerging and existing conflicts, bivalve farming may be the origin of visual invasions that may affect tourism, and may also compete with other coastal activities in space-constrained environments. These can be assessed through observation, regular interviews with local stakeholders and agencies.
The market availability indicator corresponds to the consumption of bivalve products per capita (in the case of local consumption of bivalve products) and its cost to consumers: bivalve consumption is usually calculated at the national level, indicating the amount of food per capita and per year.
Consumer prices are based on trends in wholesale prices. Large national markets publish trade journals from which these data can be obtained.
Total employment is an absolute measure of the size (or "importance") of the aquaculture industry, it is an indicator of the number of people who depend directly and indirectly on aquaculture for their livelihoods, and it has political and economic significance.
However, these two indicators do not take into account the long-term aspects of income provision, which is inherent in the term "livelihood security". Bivalve culture, thus classified as "safe", may remain vulnerable to external (e.g., environmental or market-driven) disturbances.
The most important set of indicators relates to the direct economic benefits of a particular bivalve aquaculture operation, which can be measured as follows: productivity is an indicator of unit input output, for example, labour productivity trends are an important indicator of technological progress in aquaculture, and differences in productivity between farms may indicate which farms are most vulnerable to price and profit declines.
Dealing with the environmental impacts of aquaculture may incur costs, which may include two elements: the cost of compliance arising from bivalve farming (e.g., producers are obliged to conduct an environmental impact assessment), and the regulatory, supervisory and enforcement costs of the respective agencies, with environmental protection costs being the counterpart of the cost of environmental damage.
Finally, another aspect of socio-economic indicators could be the existence and performance of financial and social security institutions for cultural workers/producers, including: specialized banking organizations (e.g., the Spanish Fund for the Regulation and Organization of the Marine and Marine Aquaculture Products Market) to improve the collective infrastructure of the sector.
The recognition of the "brotherhood" and joint reimbursement of cultural figures, which dates back to the thirteenth century in the Mediterranean, could have the right to negotiate and secure powers, such as participation in government decision-making (sometimes evolving into professional chambers of commerce with broad management powers).
Conclusion and outlook
The information in the previous section summarizes some of the complexities surrounding marine bivalve aquaculture, and this snapshot has very clearly highlighted the contextual nature of the cultural and socio-economic benefits and the impact on the communities that use these farmed products and live from them.
Marine bivalves can therefore represent important opportunities for economic activity and support social cohesion in coastal rural areas, providing potential employment opportunities in economically potentially isolated areas. If it works well, nurturing communities will contribute to the well-being of all their members as they are willing to cooperate with each other to survive and prosper.
Due to its marine nature, marine bivalve aquaculture can also provide career options for migrant or job-seeking fishers (i.e. fishers who have not lost their jobs as a result of aquaculture), which must proceed with caution given the evidence that fishermen are not farmers and may find it difficult, if not impossible, to adapt and adopt commercial bivalve culture.
Nevertheless, the development of bivalve aquaculture can preserve the character and atmosphere of coastal fishing communities, harness the knowledge and skills acquired by local coastal populations, and keep local populations economically and culturally connected to the marine environment.
However, socio-economic considerations for nurturing communities should not stop at the local level or at the borders of each country. These small-scale projects must enjoy a privileged position in the domestic market, especially in developing countries. However, they can also be extrapolated internationally through developed and sustainable markets and trade pathways.
Finally, another important aspect is the growth potential and spread of offshore bivalve aquaculture, which brings a very different perspective to the discourse and reality of farming and production communities, with implications for their responsibilities and contributions to the planning of local and regional marine spaces (and perhaps even protected areas).
This development "offshore and away from sensitive ecosystems" has the potential to reduce and exacerbate user conflicts, for example in terms of employment, ownership (equipment and production and planning processes) or technology choices, especially in developing countries (often more inclined to produce luxury goods destined for European countries).
Shellfish resource management, especially bivalve culture, is clearly an important aspect to consider so that they can generate long-term cultural (and other) services.
One of the more recent objectives is to identify specific cross-cutting and integrated approaches (including, for example, local historical and long-term data) to support the assessment of the direct and indirect socio-economic consequences of aquaculture activities at all levels, from local to global.
In this way, existing socio-economic data and lessons learned are not lost, but their applicability is used and further developed to identify current data gaps and more narratives of successful sustainable marine bivalve aquaculture projects.
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