Since 2013, the farming of fish and seafood, also known as aquaculture, in the EU has been subject to a set of EU-wide strategic guidelines, which set out standard priorities and targets, to ensure the sector is run and developed sustainably. The European Commission has launched a public consultation about the new guidelines to be implemented from late 2020.
This also provides the perfect chance for the aquaculture community to discover Blue-Cloud's work with Aquaculture Monitor, one of our five demonstrators, aiming to deliver a tool to produce national aquaculture sector overviews for monitoring aquaculture in marine cages and in coastal areas, built on interoperable services where teams can compute and publish reproducible experiments.
Target audience
The consultation is addressed to all stakeholders with an interest on EU aquaculture. In addition to Member States, other EU institutions, regional and European organizations, this public consultation targets the food and aquaculture industries, including individual aquaculture producers and corporative representations of producers. It is also addressed to civil society organizations, active voices on various aspects of the aquaculture sector, from environmental performance and animal welfare to social rights. Scientists and researchers will also have an interest in this consultation. It also concerns the individual citizen that considers that aquaculture production touches in any way in their personal sphere. In particular, consumers are also interested parties in this survey.
Background
The Strategic Guidelines for the sustainable development of EU aquaculture, adopted in 2013 (COM 2013/229), have set common priorities and targets for the development of aquaculture activities in the EU. Given developments impacting the sector, including the COVID-19 crisis, as well as the potential of the sector to contribute to policy objectives identified by the new Commission such as decarbonisation, sustainable food systems or the economic development of coastal and inland areas, the Commission is now reviewing these guidelines to support Member States and the sector in further developing aquaculture production in the EU and ensuring the sustainability and competitiveness of this economic activity. This consultation intends to provide the public with an opportunity to contribute to the discussion on main challenges, opportunities and priorities for EU aquaculture in the future, which will feed the review of the Strategic Guidelines scheduled to be adopted in late 2020.
Blue-Cloud and Aquaculture
Aquaculture is one of the key areas that are being tackled by Blue-Cloud. Sustainability and security of seafood systems are extremely relevant issues for policy-makers, especially in coastal areas which heavily depend on fishing in terms of sustenance and economy. While the demonstrator Fish, a matter of scales focuses on fisheries, Aquaculture Monitor shows how similar Blue-Cloud services can support data-related aspects of the monitoring of marine cage aquaculture.
This demonstrator is jointly developed by the Statistics and Information Branch of the Fisheries Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the French provider of environmental monitoring solutions Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS). The ambition is to further develop and provide a robust and replicable environment to monitor aquaculture in marine cages and in coastal areas.
Discover how Aquaculture Monitor will contribute to the enhancement of data-driven solutions for fish farming policies and management, register for our webinar scheduled on 25 September 2020.
