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Courtesy of NAA:

The authors of a new paper entitled, “Stringency of Environmental Regulation and Aquaculture Growth: A Cross Country Analysis,” report that during the last three decades aquaculture has been the fastest growing animal-food-producing sector in the world; contributing half of the seafood supply. However, they note there has been significant growth disparity among aquaculture-producing countries. The reasons why some countries have achieved remarkable growth in aquaculture while others have stagnated or even declined was the question they examined.

In the paper, the authors investigated whether environmental regulations have an impact on aquaculture growth. Using a cross-country regression analysis, they showed that stringent environmental regulations were negatively related to aquaculture growth, whereas Gross Domestic Product growth had a positive effect. Countries often face a difficult balancing act between growth and environmental considerations when devising regulations. Their empirical results suggest that stricter environmental regulations in developed countries have contributed to lower growth rates and that these countries are falling behind emerging and developing economies that have more lenient environmental regulations.

The paper appeared in the journal Aquaculture Economics and Management, Vol. 20, Issue 2. It is available as an Editor’s Choice, free access paper for the next month.  To read or download the publication, please click here.