Certification schemes are becoming increasingly important within aquaculture management, but the indicators that are used by these schemes are subject to considerable debate. Many have questioned their actual impact on improving the industry, and whether they effectively address the many externalities of aquaculture production. In this paper, we study the choice of indicators in eight major certification scheme standards for salmon aquaculture and examine to what degree they manage to address impacts beyond individual production sites. We find that, in accordance with the criticism, the majority of indicators pertain only to the site-level. However, indicators related to traceability, and to coordination and sharing of information among producers can elevate local concerns to a higher level of impact. We, therefore, argue that among all the certification scheme standards considered here, these types of indicators should be emphasized to a larger extent.
In this paper, we present and describe data comprising indicators of sustainability, collected from eight of the major certification schemes for salmon aquaculture and categorized according to the topics covered by each. These indicators cover most aspects of aquaculture production, including biotic and abiotic effects, feed, emission and waste, fish health and welfare, social assurance, and respect for native culture. In addition to being published in its entirety as supplementary material alongside this article, the data is available through a searchable database on the SustainFish project site: https://sustainfish.wixsite.com/sustainfishproject/search-indicator-database.
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