THE EXPANSION OF AQUACULTURE AND ITS EFFECTS ON GLOBAL LAND USE AND SUSTAINABILITY

Being the fastest growing food producing sector, aquaculture has the potential to provide high quality protein sources and meet increasing future food demand. However, the raising concerns over competition for land - direct and through feed competition – and sustainability as well as restrictive regulations may limit the expansion of aquaculture. We provide a thorough literature review of the complex interlinkages across aquaculture, land use and sustainability. As these relationships have, to our knowledge, not systematically been analyzed before, the literature review is of an explorative character and touches and combines various topics in and around aquaculture (e.g. environmental sustainability, political regulation). However, it is always centered on global aquaculture and land use. In order to answer key questions as: (1) how aquaculture contributes to food security?, (2) how sustainable is aquaculture?, and (3) how aquaculture connects with agriculture?, we combine existing literature from various disciplines (e.g. aquaculture, agricultural economics, land use) for a thorough description of the relationships and give an overview of quantitative models for economic and environmental impact assessment. Additionally, this study provides a conceptual idea for the construction of a fisheries module in the CAPRI model (Britz, 2005) including a suitable classification of fish species for policy advice in the EU. Based on the understanding and concept developed in this paper, the fisheries module will be implemented and refined in the CAPRI model in a later step. It will be used for analyzing the impacts of the expansion of aquaculture on land use and simulating policies to enhance aquaculture sustainability