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Environmental performance of blue foods

  • Publication | 2021
Global Food and Nutrition Security

Fish and other aquatic foods (blue foods) present an opportunity for more sustainable diets. Yet comprehensive comparison has been limited due to sparse inclusion of blue foods in environmental impact studies relative to the vast diversity of production.

The study provides standardized estimates of greenhouse gas, nitrogen, phosphorus, freshwater and land stressors for species groups covering nearly three quarters of global production.

The study finds that across all blue foods, farmed bivalves and seaweeds generate the lowest stressors. Capture fisheries predominantly generate greenhouse gas emissions, with small pelagic fishes generating lower emissions than all fed aquaculture, but flatfish and crustaceans generating the highest. Among farmed finfish and crustaceans, silver and bighead carps have the lowest greenhouse gas, nitrogen and phosphorus emissions, but highest water use, while farmed salmon and trout use the least land and water.

Finally, we model intervention scenarios and find improving feed conversion ratios reduces stressors across all fed groups, increasing fish yield reduces land and water use by up to half, and optimizing gears reduces capture fishery emissions by more than half for some groups. Collectively, our analysis identifies high-performing blue foods, highlights opportunities to improve environmental performance, advances data-poor environmental assessments, and informs sustainable diets.

Resources
More information and links
Authors
Jessica A. Gephart, Patrik J. G. Henriksson, Robert W. R. Parker, Alon Shepon, Kelvin D. Gorospe, Kristina Bergman, Gidon Eshel, Christopher D. Golden, Benjamin S. Halpern, Sara Hornborg, Malin Jonell, Marc Metian, Kathleen Mifflin, Richard Newton,
Peter Tyedmers, Wenbo Zhang, Friederike Ziegler & Max Troell
Publisher
Nature
Geographic coverageGlobal
Available from

12 Oct 2021

Knowledge service | MetadataGlobal Food and Nutrition Security | Sustainable Food Systems | Diet
Digital Europa Thesaurus (DET)aquaculturefisheries policyFoodgreenhouse gasenvironmental protectionanimal feedingstuffssustainable fisheries
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