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Circular Economy Opportunities for Fisheries and Aquaculture in Australia

Project number: 2020-078

Project Status:

Completed

Budget expenditure: $158,000.00

Principal Investigator: Kate Barclay

Organisation: University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Project start/end date: 16 Mar 2021 - 29 Sep 2021

Contact:

FRDC

Need

Current resource use challenges sustainability and resilience of industries. Circular value chains allow management of waste losses and maximise resource recovery. A circular economy (CE) mimics the cycles in nature in which there is no waste. Maximum value and utility of products and materials is maintained in CE through a combination of extending product lifetimes, increasing resource use intensity, and end-of-life material recycling. CE includes the idea of regenerative development, i.e. as the earth’s resources cycle as materials through the economy they restore and enhance, rather than deplete, natural capital.

Economic opportunities of circularity are well identified, the World Economic Forum estimates global adoption of CE principles would deliver cost savings of US$1trillion dollars per annum by 2025. A recent UTS:ISF study estimated an Australian CE could be worth AU$2 billion by 2025. However, current knowledge gaps constrain how CE may develop, at what scale it makes sense to close loops, and the strategies, policy mix and incentives needed to promote circularity.

For fisheries and aquaculture, CE adoption addresses waste challenges through the creation of new value chains for fish/shell waste and substitution or recycling plastics and provides co-benefits of resource efficiency, contributions to healthy aquatic eco-systems and creation of added value and new employment. Frameworks to guide ‘CE thinking’ exist e.g. Ellen Macarthur Foundation’s 10R’s and ReSOLVE (see Supplementary Material), but have not been explored, are often omitted in food innovation debates (Pagotto and Halog 2015), and opportunities for implementation within the sector are still emerging (e.g., replacement of fish-feed for abalone with wine production waste or repurposing mussel shells as high-nutrient fertiliser). The need to understand the context, opportunity and benefit of CE innovations and to identify strategic approaches to sectoral circularity at scale are apparent.

Objectives

1. Develop increased knowledge of how the concept of circular economy relates to fishing and aquaculture, including downstream activities such as post-harvest processing and packaging.

2. Develop increased knowledge of how circular practices being applied in other sectors and industries relate to the fishing and aquaculture sectors and could be adopted by fishing and aquaculture businesses. This includes opportunities for fisheries/aquaculture industries to develop circular linkages with other marine and land based sectors.

3. Identify opportunities that are available and areas for exploration in the short, medium and longer term to progress a circular economy for fisheries and aquaculture.

4. Identify barriers to adopting circularity within the fisheries/aquaculture sector, and known strategies for addressing those barriers.

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-9953662-6-8

Authors: Rebecca Cunningham Kate Barclay Brent Jacobs Samantha Sharpe and Nicholas McClean

Final Report • 2022-09-30 • 7.78 MB

2020-078-DLD.pdf

Summary

The aim of this project was to understand current circular economy (CE) activities, opportunities and barriers in the fisheries and aquaculture sector in Australia through extensive stakeholder engagement. This research and consultation project has found that there are many CE activities occurring throughout the sector at a range of scales. However, there are significant barriers to overcome to fully realise the opportunities that CE presents. One finding is that the scale of the enterprise plays a role in the ability of any business to absorb elements of the supply chain and optimise the reprocessing of their waste streams.

Those businesses working on developing new and niche products may require additional collaborations to meet their circular goals. There is also a balance to be struck in terms of gathering the appropriate volumes of waste or reuse materials for a business to be economically viable, while ensuring that the transport and storage (e.g. freezing) of those materials does not invalidate a company’s existing carbon footprint.

Social and economic evaluation of NSW coastal aquaculture

Project number: 2015-302

Project Status:

Completed

Budget expenditure: $118,253.00

Principal Investigator: Kate Barclay

Organisation: University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Project start/end date: 30 Jun 2015 - 29 Jun 2016

Contact:

FRDC

Need

The NSW coastal aquaculture industry needs sound information about its economic and social contributions to coastal communities for its continued access to coastal resources to address prevalent negative perceptions. Competing coastal uses such as marine protected areas for conservation purposes and havens for recreational fishing may compromise the viability of aquaculture. For example, in recent submissions to government about commercial shellfish aquaculture leases in Jervis Bay, one submission claimed: “The contribution to the local and regional economy is estimated to be no more than $2 million. Is it worth risking a $700 million tourism industry for this small return?” Responses to this submission relied on evidence from locations outside NSW because currently there is no information available about contributions aquaculture makes to NSW regional communities beyond the value of farm gate sales. It is possible that aquaculture may enhance tourism, as it does in other regions in Australia and overseas, rather than detract from it, but without evidence it is difficult to make the case.

The NSW coastal aquaculture industry and the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) staff working on aquaculture have identified a need for a social and economic evaluation of the contributions the industry makes to regional communities. The new Marine Estate resource allocation process is based on assessments of social, economic and ecological values, threats and risks, highlighting absolute necessity of social and economic evaluations. Current trends for social responsibility reporting or certification for marketing also require social assessments. Finally, part of the need here is to improve the industry’s social license to operate. This project will provide baseline information that industry can then use to inform their community engagement strategies. DPI Aquaculture Manager Ian Lyall discovered that this kind of evaluation was planned for FRDC 2014/301 (on wild catch fisheries) and contacted the PI Kate Barclay to see if the same could be done for aquaculture, resulting in this proposal. DPI would benefit from this information for strategic planning for future development of coastal aquaculture.

Objectives

1. Evaluate the economic contribution of aquaculture production in relevant regions on the NSW coast, including the regional economic impacts such as multiplier effects and employment and contributions to related sectors within regions, building on previous similar studies.

2. Evaluate the social contributions of aquaculture for the same regions, including the participation of families in community organizations, heritage values of seafood production for regions, and the social aspects of economic contributions, building on previous studies.

3. Establish a methodology to be used for ongoing social and economic evaluations as part of government reporting and industry engagement, building on recent and ongoing work in this field.

4. Write a report integrating the social and economic evaluations for each region identifying the role of aquaculture in those communities, and highlighting threats to sustainability and viability, in a form suitable for engaging with local and state government agencies.