Environmental Risk Analysis of Hazardous Substances From Aquaculture in the EU Economies

Aquaculture, although a valuable source of food, can generate significant substances that pose environmental hazards if not properly managed. The European Region (EU27) has implemented regulations and initiatives to mitigate the environmental impact of aquaculture since the early 2000s. Aquaculture has the potential to be a sustainable source of food, but it's essential to address the challenges of marine hazardous substances. Therefore, the focus of this research is to analyze the impact of the aquaculture industry on the marine hazardous chemicals within the EU27 for the years between 1990 and 2023. The methodologies of ordinary least squares (OLS), two-stage least squares (2SLS), and random least squares (RLS) estimators have been used to resolve the endogeneity problem concerning baseline regression with exogenous variables, causal reasoning with endogenous variables, as well as interference with the data and violation of the distributional assumptions. As for the effect magnitudes, aquaculture, the oil and gas industry, and the gross domestic product (GDP) were the primary contributors to marine hazardous chemicals in EU13 as opposed to EU14. Still, the precise magnitudes provided by all three estimators suggest that, in comparison to EU14 developed countries, the quality of institutions more favorably impacts the EU13 countries in terms of mitigating emissions of excess harmful substances. It is novel in this research on the European Union's (EU's) policy, which tries to combine whole-of-government technological approaches with stern regulations and active partnerships to move from the "produce-dispose" paradigm of waste aquaculture toward lower waste, more sustainable systems that align with ecological and economic goals.