Sustainable growth of Swedish aquaculture - today and tomorrow

Sweden imports most of the seafood it consumes. Many wild fish stocks are exploited at an unsustainable level, but aquaculture offers potential for increased seafood production. This project aims to analyze the environmental, social and economic sustainability of Sweden's aquaculture production today, and investigate potential future scenarios.

In this project Swedish aquaculture will be analyzed using the three pillars of sustainability; environmental, economic and social sustainability . The analysis will include the most important species for food production: rainbow trout, char, tilapia, clarias and mussels.

Environmental sustainability

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) will be the main method to quantitatively evaluate the environmental impact (climate impact and eutrophication potential) of the main production species in Swedish aquaculture. However, LCA has limitations and is most useful for calculating environmental impacts on a larger geographical scale, therefore this method will be complemented and integrated with additional analyses. As a complement to LCA, environmental data will be collected from aquaculture farms to enable modeling of eutrophication potential linked to Swedish aquaculture at local and regional level.

Economic and social sustainability

In addition to environmental sustainability, economic and social sustainability will be analyzed using social life cycle assessment (SLCA) and a mapping and analysis of the market potential for the Swedish market of domestic seafood from the producer and trade perspective.

Future scenarios

Once a baseline of current production is established, sustainability analyses will be carried out of a number of realistic future scenarios (e.g. increased production with existing or new technology, increased land-based production, different feed composition, etc.) Results will support companies, authorities and other decision makers in leading the aquaculture industry to sustainable growth.

Communication and dissemination of results

The knowledge and results generated from the sustainability analyses will be communicated widely on several occasions. Partly in writing on this website, in scientific reports and a popular science report in Swedish, partly orally at a workshop with the industry, podcast, and at an open seminar, and presented at a relevant conference or equivalent.

The project is partly financed with EU funds from the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (Havs-, fiskeri- och vattenbruksprogrammet - Jordbruksverket.se).