We present a global-scale life cycle assessment of a major food commodity, farmed salmon. Specifically, we report the cumulative energy use, biotic resource use, and greenhouse gas, acidifying, and eutrophying emissions associated with producing farmed salmon in Norway, the UK, British Columbia (Canada), and Chile, as well as a production-weighted global average. We found marked differences in the nature and quantity of material/energy resource use and associated emissions per unit production across regions. This suggests significant scope for improved environmental performance in the industry as a whole. We identify key leverage points for improving performance, most notably the critical importance of least-environmental cost feed sourcing patterns and continued improvements in feed conversion efficiency. Overall, impacts were lowest for Norwegian production in most impact categories, and highest for UK farmed salmon. Our results are of direct relevance to industry, policy makers, eco-labeling programs, and consumers seeking to further sustainability objectives in salmon aquaculture.

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Background, aim, and scope There is a growing recognition on the part of industry, policymakers, and consumers that sustainable industry practices are needed to maintain environmental and social well being. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized analytical framework that has traditionally focused on evaluation of the environmental impacts of processes or products using a cradle-to-grave approach. Yet, sustainability, defined generally, requires that assessments consider not only environmental but also social and economic impacts-the other two pillars of sustainability. Even though the LCA methodology has the potential to include both social and economic indicators, and SETAC guidelines recommend the inclusion of such impact categories in all detailed LCAs, no established set of metrics exists to describe the relationship between socioeconomic indicators (SEIs) and a specific product or process; nor is there a common understanding on how such metrics might be developed. This article presents the methods for and development of a suite of socioeconomic indicators that complement the LCA methodology and provides a comprehensive approach for assessing the cradle-to-grave sustainability of a product or process.Methods A combined top-down and bottom-up approach serves as the basis for development of the set of socioeconomic indicators presented here. Generally recognized societal values, industry specific issues, and financial constraints associated with collection of data necessary for measurement of the indicators are all factors considered in this approach. In our categorization, socioeconomic indicators fall into two types: additive indicators and descriptive indicators. Results Indicators are categorized based on fundamental methodological differences and then used to describe the socioeconomic impacts associated with salmon production. Additive indicators (e.g., production costs and value added) and descriptive indicators (e.g., fair wage and contribution to personal income) are both discussed. Discussion There is a need to further develop and refine methods to assess the results of socioeconomic indicators using a life cycle perspective. It would be most interesting to conduct additional case studies that focus on such methodological development, particularly trade-offs between stakeholder groups and pillars of sustainability. Additional areas of discussion are (1) the need for data to populate socioeconomic indicators and (2) defining system boundaries for socioeconomic indicators. Conclusions This article presents a set of socioeconomic indicators designed to serve as a complement for the LCA framework, thus, increasing the framework's effectiveness as a measure of the overall sustainability of a product or process. Development of socioeconomic indicators as a complement to LCA is still in its early stages, however, and further research is required.

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Summary In this study we discuss impact categories and indicators to incorporate local ecological impacts into life cycle assessment (LCA) for aquaculture. We focus on the production stages of salmon farming—freshwater hatcheries used to produce smolts and marine grow‐out sites using open netpens. Specifically, we propose two impact categories: impacts of nutrient release and impacts on biodiversity. Proposed indicators for impacts of nutrient release are (1) the area altered by farm waste, (2) changes in nutrient concentration in the water column, (3) the percent of carrying capacity reached, (4) the percent of total anthropogenic nutrient release, and (5) release of wastes into freshwater. Proposed indicators for impacts on biodiversity are (1) the number of escaped salmon, (2) the number of reported disease outbreaks, (3) parasite abundance on farms, and (4) the percent reduction in wild salmon survival. For each proposed indicator, an example of how the indicator could be estimated is given and the strengths and weaknesses of that indicator are discussed. We propose that including local environmental impacts as well as global‐scale ones in LCA allows us to better identify potential trade‐offs, where actions that are beneficial at one scale are harmful at another, and synchronicities, where actions have desirable or undesirable effects at both spatial scales. We also discuss the potential applicability of meta‐analytic statistical techniques to LCA.

Social, economic, and ecological criteria contribute to the successful design, implementation, and management of marine protected areas (MPAs). In the context of California's Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, we developed a set of methods for collecting, compiling, and analyzing data about the spatial extent and relative economic importance of commercial and recreational fishing. We interviewed 174 commercial fishers who represented the major fisheries in the initiative's north-central coast region, which extends from Point Arena south to Pigeon Point. These fishers provided data that we used to map the extent of each of the fishing grounds, to weight the relative importance of areas within the grounds, to characterize the operating costs of each fishery, and to analyze the potential economic losses associated with proposed marine protected areas. A regional stakeholder group used the maps and impact analyses in conjunction with other data sets to iteratively identify economic and ecological trade-offs in designations of different areas as MPAs at regional, port, and fishery extents. Their final proposed MPA network designated 20% of state waters as MPAs. Potential net economic loss ranged from 1.7% to 14.2% in the first round of network design and totaled 6.3% in the final round of design. This process is a case study in the application of spatial analysis to validate and integrate local stakeholder knowledge in marine planning.

The 27 oil and gas platforms offshore southern California will eventually reach the end of their useful lifetimes (estimated between 2015 and 2030) and will be decommissioned. Current state and federal laws and regulations allow for alternative uses in lieu of the complete removal required in existing leases. Any decommissioning pathway will create a complex mix of costs, benefits, opportunities, and constraints for multiple user groups. To assist the California Natural Resources Agency in understanding these issues, we evaluated the potential socioeconomic impacts of the 2 most likely options: complete removal and partial removal of the structure to 85 feet below the waterline with the remaining structure left in place as an artificial reef-generally defined as a manmade structure with some properties that mimic a natural reef. We estimated impacts on commercial fishing, commercial shipping, recreational fishing, nonconsumptive boating, and nonconsumptive SCUBA diving. Available data supported quantitative estimates for some impacts, semiquantitative estimates for others, and only qualitative approximations of the direction of impact for still others. Even qualitative estimates of the direction of impacts and of user groups' likely preferred options have been useful to the public and decision makers and provided valuable input to the project's integrative decision model. Uncertainty surrounds even qualitative estimates of the likely direction of impact where interactions between multiple impacts could occur or where user groups include subsets that would experience the same option differently. In addition, we were unable to quantify effects on ecosystem value and on the larger regional ecosystem, because of data gaps on the population sizes and dynamics of key species and the uncertainty surrounding the contribution of platforms to available hard substrate and related natural populations offshore southern California.