Aquaculture is vital for global food security and nutrition. It sustains the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, especially in communities that are vulnerable to poverty and malnutrition.
The Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture provide a framework that all countries and stakeholders can use to advance towards better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind.
Humans have been farming fish and other aquatic foods for millennia, but aquaculture as we know it today is a relatively new industry that has grown exponentially in recent decades, fuelled by scientific progress, technological innovations, investment, and a constantly rising global demand for aquatic foods.
Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food sectors and the only way to meet increasing demand from an expanding world population. With capture fisheries at capacity or declining because of overexploitation and climate change, aquaculture has become an essential activity, providing over half of the world's aquatic foods for human consumption.
If done right, aquaculture has the potential to provide enough healthy, nutrient-rich, and climate-friendly food for a world population expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. It is therefore vital to steer this powerful, dynamic, and constantly evolving industry onto a path of sustainability for the sake of current and future generations.
To do so, FAO and its Members drafted the Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture (GSA): a set of shared and agreed principles, practices and recommendations that all countries and stakeholders can use to advance towards more productive, efficient, resilient, climate-smart, and socially and environmentally responsible agrifood systems, in which aquaculture fulfils its potential to meet the increasing demand for safe, nutritious, accessible, and affordable aquatic foods.
The vision underlying the GSA is of an aquaculture sector that contributes significantly to a world free from hunger and to the equitable improvement of the living standards of all actors in its value chains, including the poorest.
The GSA are global, voluntary, adaptable, and complementary to existing laws and regulations. They rest on the principles of sustainability, environmental stewardship, non-discrimination, the rule of law, equity and equality, participation, transparency and accountability, and holistic and integrated approaches.