Proposed sustainability indicators for continental aquaculture parks: evaluation of a project in the Amazon

Abstract

The promotion of fish farming in cages in large public reservoirs, as aquaculture parks, constitutes the main policy of the Brazilian government to increase fish production. This paper proposes a set of indicators for assessing the sustainability of continental aquaculture parks and applied it in a case study at reservoir of Tucuruí hydroelectric power plant, Pará State. Sustainability indicators in environmental, economic and social dimensions were defined, measured and validated through literature review, site observations and interviews with social actors in bimonthly trips to the aquaculture park from August 2010 to July 2012. The proposal accounted with 21 sustainability indicators, seven in each dimension, wich composed their respective subindex to provide a final sustainability index. Through it, the aquaculture park was classified as unsustainable, being economic subindex the most important for non sustainability, followed by social and environmental subindex, respectively. The set of sustainability indicators defined and the methodology proposed were practical and easy to understand, and can be used to analyze other continental aquaculture parks.