Aquaculture Sustainability: Developing Concepts of a Decision Support Tool for Licensing Freshwater Cage Aquaculture in Ontario

Approaches to managing aquaculture’s sustainability have traditionally focused on a relatively few, but important, environmental impact parameters. A broader and more contemporary concept of aquaculture sustainability has now evolved to include various other parameters considered relevant to those multiple stakeholder groups who may be affected by the industry and its practices. Consequently, the lead licensing agency for aquaculture in Ontario initiated a project to establish new ‘Harmonized Guidelines ’ for reviewing a cage-farm site application, in an attempt to develop a ‘one-stop ’ application approach, and improved licensing procedures that can accommodate the needs of multi-stakeholder assessment. A formalized, Decision Support Tool (DST) was developed to incorporate these new guidelines into an objective and transparent decision-making matrix that could be used to aid in the more efficient assessment of an application for either the establishment of a new farm site, or the expansion of an existing farm. The primary objectives for the DST development included: the provision of an ‘approved’, ‘cautionary ’ or ‘refusal ’ rating system for each section criteria; an overal