post-doctoral research

Globally, aquaculture production has rapidly increased to the point where it now represents over half of the total global seafood production. Factors fuelling the demand include a growing (and urbanizing) world population and shifts within people's dietary preferences away from meat consumption towards seafood, which means the importance of aquaculture will only become stronger. Yet, the current growth in aquaculture has not been without environmental consequences. To better manage the industry and improve environmental outcomes, governments, industry and civil society have responded by developing rules/legislation, including voluntary farm-level standards such as the Aquaculture Stewardship Council.

However, despite the benefits of these initiatives, existing efforts narrowly focus on environmental performance and do not explicitly analyze and assess the governance of the aquaculture industry. Therefore, what has been missing is a more comprehensive framework incorporating the range of social processes involved in aquaculture governance. Recognizing this gap, researchers from Wageningen University's Environmental Policy Group, in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch® (SFW) program, developed the Aquaculture Governance Indicators (AGIs), drawing inspiration from the structure of the Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs) by Anderson et al. (2015). For more information, go to the AGIs project website.

doctoral research

Asif, F. (2020). Coastal Cambodians on the Move: The Interplay of Migration, Social Wellbeing and Resilience In Three Fishing Communities [Thesis, Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa]. http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-24653

Key contributions:

• Furthering understanding of migration as a livelihood strategy in coastal fishing communities/small-scale fisheries via coastal Cambodia
• Integrating migration and social wellbeing to understand individual and collective motivations, benefits, and trade-offs within small-scale fishing communities in Cambodia with implications for those across Southeast Asia
• Adopting and incorporating social wellbeing, conceptually and methodologically, with social resilience as a framework to interpret the motivations, decisions, and experiences of coastal Cambodians, both those who leave and those who stay in the village