Sustainable Aquaculture Governance and Community Engagement

Sustainable aquaculture governance encompasses the regulatory structures, policy instruments and institutional arrangements that steer the development and operation of aquatic farming towards long-term ecological, economic and social goals. Central to this endeavour is the integration of environmental safeguards—such as site selection, disease management and effluent control—with equitable access to resources and benefits among stakeholders. Community engagement forms a cornerstone of this governance landscape, fostering social licence through participatory decision-making, transparent licensing processes and co-management arrangements. By drawing on local knowledge, promoting capacity building and encouraging dialogue between industry, regulators and coastal communities, governance systems can improve compliance, mitigate conflict over space and environmental impacts, and enhance resilience to emerging challenges such as climate change and market volatility. Recent advances emphasise adaptive governance, underpinned by data-driven decision-support tools, cross-sectoral coordination and the co-production of knowledge to align aquaculture expansion with biodiversity conservation and food security objectives on a global scale.

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Sustainable Aquaculture Governance and Community Engagement publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in sustainable aquaculture governance and community engagement across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Governance frameworks: Structured systems of laws, institutions and processes that determine how aquaculture activities are planned, authorised and monitored.

Marine spatial planning: A public process for coordinating the allocation of marine areas to competing uses in order to balance environmental, economic and social objectives.

Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA): A practice in which species from different trophic levels (e.g., fish, shellfish, seaweed) are co-cultured to recycle nutrients and reduce environmental impacts.

Social licence to operate: The ongoing acceptance and approval of an activity by local communities and stakeholders, established through trust, transparency and meaningful engagement.

References

1. Planning and licensing for marine aquaculture. Reviews in Aquaculture (2023).
2. Governance hurdles for expansion of low trophic mariculture production in Sweden. Ambio (2024).
3. Visualizing the social in aquaculture: How social dimension components illustrate the effects of aquaculture across geographic scales. Marine Policy (2020).