Evaluating socio-ecological interactions in Asian seafood production using Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

Purpose and goal

The project set out to evaluate shrimp farming in Bangladesh and the sardine fishery in the Strait of Bali from a lifecycle perspective. The evaluations are based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework, but with socioeconomic indicators and uncertainty analyses. In Bangladesh, the shrimp value chain were to be compared to its Chinese counterparts, and in Indonesia focus was on capture fisheries for sardines and a jellyfish fishery that has come to replace it, after the sardine stocks collapsed.

Expected results and effects

The project aim to produce innovative insights into how to evaluate socioeconomic indicators and include uncertainty estimates into LCAs. The advances were tested on two seafood case studies in Asia to increase our insight into the sustainability of farmed shrimp and fish.

Planned approach and implementation

The Bangladeshi case came to test different intensities of production using a dataset of 2,678 fish farmers. The results show that intensification of aquaculture is positively correlated with acidification, eutrophication, and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts; negatively correlated with freshwater consumption; and indifferent with regard to GHG emissions and land occupation. The subsequent Indonesian case study scaled impacts to a national level and included socioeconomic indicators, with the conclusion that the national production targets up to 2030 need to be revised.