Concerns
In the last 15 years, shrimp aquaculture has been transformed from a small-scale traditional endeavor of farmers in China and Southeast Asia into a large-scale global business. The shift to more intensive systems was first done in Taiwan. Burdened by diseases, Taiwans aquaculture industry soon collapsed. Although the same problems repeatedly occurred in other countries, the potential profits from this export-oriented cash crop proved to be an irresistible lure. As a result, industrial shrimp aquaculture spread to 50 countries in less than two decades.
As the explosion in industrial shrimp aquaculture progressed, experts, activists, and journalists have increasingly documented the environmental and social concerns associated with industrial shrimp farming. Major grassroots movements have emerged around the world to address these environmental and social issues. Worldwide, shrimp farms have destroyed critical coastal wetlands --- including mangrove forests. In the process. they have disrupted and displaced traditional fishing communities and contaminated freshwater supplies essential for drinking and local agriculture. As a result, there has been social conflict, human rights abuses, and violence. For example, Human Rights Watch, a well-respected monitoring group, is expected to soon release its report detailing the cases of abuse related with shrimp aquaculture in Bangladesh.
The industrial shrimp farms, while being plagued by disease, primarily due to overcrowding of shrimp in ponds to achieve the highest short-term profits, continue to result in degraded ecosystems. Scientists have raised new concerns that these viruses might spread to wild stocks and the new varieties of specially farm-bred shrimp might be genetically-susceptible to these viral diseases. Along with this came intensive application of antibiotics and probiotics in efforts to prevent and control disease outbreaks. This risks unknown impacts on surrounding ecosystems from water containing antibiotic substances.
A principal objective of ISA Net is to empower the coastal communities and support their efforts to maintain control of the use and management of the coastal resources on which they depend. In India, the struggle has gone all the way to the Supreme Court, which in December 1996 outlawed commercial shrimp farms in the coastal zone. In Honduras, fishing villages on the Gulf of Fonseca have mobilized to persuade the government to enact a moratorium on construction of new shrimp farms while the capacity of the area is being evaluated along with an assessment of proper management practices. In Ecuador, community activists in Esmeraldas Province were jailed for resisting the illegal cutting of mangroves for a shrimp farm. In Tanzania, plans to establish the first massive shrimp operation in Africa --- a 10,000 hectare farm on the Rufiji Delta --- are generating involved discussions.
The expansion of industrial shrimp farming has been driven by the soaring demand for shrimp in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe. Accounting for 30% of the world's shrimp production, aquaculture is hailed by industry as a way of taking pressure off wild shrimp stocks. The global catch of wild shrimp peaked in 1993. Meanwhile, shrimp trawling is considered to be one of the world's most wasteful and harmful fishing practices.
To address the concerns outlined above, ISA Net prioritizes constructive engagement with local and national governments, local and international investors, the shrimp aquaculture industry, multilateral development banks, bilateral agencies, local stakeholders and the public of the shrimp producing and consuming countries. This constructive engagement is aimed primarily at building ecologically and socially sustainable policies and practices.
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