Aquaculture Governance Indicators: A diagnostic framework for steering towards sustainability

The Aquaculture Governance Indicators (AGI) are an integrated social scientific framework for assessing governance performance for steering aquaculture sectors towards sustainability around the world. The AGI assess four governance dimensions against three governance principles. The four governance dimensions – legislation, voluntary codes and standards, collaborative arrangements and governance capabilities - allow for a systematic mapping of the governance landscape. The governance principles – legitimacy, effectuation, and coordination – focus on the organisation of roles and responsibilities, the implementation and effectiveness of enforcement, monitoring and learning, and the alignment of activities. This paper demonstrates the explorative and explanatory power of the AGI framework using the case of disease management in the salmon industries of Norway, Chile, and Canada. Our findings show that the governance of disease risk in these salmon industries is strongly supported by state legislation, yet remains limited in steering towards alternative solutions for avoiding or mitigating the effects of disease – and other persistent environmental challenges. We conclude that the AGI provides a valuable framework for self- or guided reflection and deliberation amongst decision-makers and stakeholders in aquaculture sectors around the world. Further development of the AGI framework will focus on a global set of country assessments, comparative analysis between production regions, comparison with other aquaculture indicator frameworks and the AGI’s potential for assessing the governance performance of food systems more broadly.