Pathways to sustainability or collapse in inland small-scale aquaculture systems: insights from a social–ecological systems model

Despite the promise of inland small-scale aquaculture for improving food security and alleviating poverty, the long-term sustainability of such production systems remains poorly understood, particularly in contexts where economic and ecological processes reinforce each other. This paper develops a stylized social–ecological model that captures feedbacks between producer wealth, fish biomass, and nutrient dynamics in inland pond-based small-scale aquaculture systems. The model reveals how these intertwined feedbacks shape the long-term dynamics of the system and lead to monostability, bistability, or multistability. These regimes correspond to a collapse, a high-yield but high-risk, and a sustainable equilibrium in fish production. Using bifurcation and stability analysis, we identify six dynamic scenarios: Balanced efficiency, Overload, Flux, Knife-edge, Tipping pond and Decay, that represent qualitatively different long-term outcomes. Rather than predicting specific outcomes, the model gives a structural understanding of small-scale aquaculture system dynamics and highlights the importance of local context and producers’ heterogeneity in shaping the outcomes. It also provides a theoretical foundation for scenario-based management and empirical model development. • We develop a stylized dynamical model linking wealth, fish biomass, and nutrients. • Feedbacks between economic and ecological processes create multiple long-term outcomes. • Bifurcation analysis reveals poverty traps, sustainability states, and collapse pathways. • Price-responsive variant shows how market signals shift system thresholds. • Results identify structural leverage points for sustainability in inland small-scale aquaculture systems.