Environmental regulation of shrimp farming operations across Asia takes
a major step forward next month, when the U.N. food agency considers
adoption of a set of tougher industry guidelines published on Tuesday.
The key victims of Asias shrimp farms are its mangrove forests, the
stilt-like luxuriant root systems of which form a natural protective
barrier against destructive waves, prompting many countries to plant
them after the 2004 tsunami.
Environmental devastation wreaked by shrimp farms across the region has
driven policymakers to hammer out a strategy which aims to save natural
resources and protect livelihoods, experts meeting in the Malaysian
capital said.
Asia generates about 75 percent of total world production of farmed
shrimp, which stood at 1.6 million tonnes in 2003 and was worth nearly
$9 billion, the U.N.s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
estimates.
As demand for shrimp grows worldwide, concern over the sustainability of
fish stocks has risen, forcing consumers and retailers to demand that
the food meets environmental guidelines.
"Its ridiculous to think that a multi-billion-dollar industry can be
stopped," said environmentalist Ben Brown, who works for the Mangrove
Action Project in Indonesia.
"But the aquaculture industry is very far from adhering to best
practices. Its still very much a get-in-quick, do-it-dirty approach,
and it causes a lot of havoc."
Policymakers have found it hard to reconcile different environmental
yardsticks, spurring a group of United Nations agencies and the World
Bank to join hands in thrashing out the new, simpler prescription for
the industry.
"There are too many environmental guidelines out there -- theres
confusion among governments and investors about which ones to follow,"
said Koji Yamamoto, a researcher with the Network of Aquaculture Centres
in Asia-Pacific (NACA).
NACA, which groups 17 nations from India and China to Australia and
North Korea, published the set of eight principles for responsible
shrimp farming, which an FAO panel is due to weigh and consider adopting
at a meeting in September.
Once adopted by the FAO, the guidelines would be incorporated in the
national shrimp farming policies of different governments, Yamamoto
added. NACAs 17 members have already signed off on the guidelines.
The rules address issues ranging from farm location, design and
construction to questions of shrimp feeding, health and nutrition, as
well as food safety issues and concerns over sharing the farms benefits
with surrounding communities.
Stricter regulation is crucial because governments often overlook the
true environmental costs of shrimp farms, which destroy mangroves, and
rip up the livelihoods of poor coastal communities, researchers and
economists said.
"There is no incentive to take account of mangrove costs, because they
are not felt as losses to the private producers, but to the wider
economy," said Lucy Emerton, an environmental economist with the World
Conservation Union, IUCN.
Clearance for shrimp ponds accounted for 20 to 50 percent of mangrove
clearances, Emerton said, noting that over the last 20 years shrimp
aquaculture had grown by 400 percent while mangrove forest areas had
shrunk by 26 percent.
"In Asia, the average intensive shrimp farm survives only two to five
years before serious pollution and disease problems cause early
closures," said Brown, adding that 99 percent of mangroves in some parts
of East Java had been lost to shrimp farming.
Polluted soils left by unprofitable shrimp farms often needed to be
treated for a very long time to be rejuvenated, he said.
(Por Clarence Fernandez,
Environmental News Network, 24/08/2006)