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. 2019 Feb;48(2):111-122.
doi: 10.1007/s13280-018-1060-9. Epub 2018 May 29.

Global seafood consumption footprint

Jordi Guillen  1 , Fabrizio Natale  2 , Natacha Carvalho  3 , John Casey  3 , Johann Hofherr  3 , Jean-Noël Druon  3 , Gianluca Fiore  3 , Maurizio Gibin  3 , Antonella Zanzi  3 , Jann Th Martinsohn  3
Affiliations

Global seafood consumption footprint

Jordi Guillen et al. Ambio. 2019 Feb.

Abstract

To ensure food security and nutritional quality for a growing world population in the face of climate change, stagnant capture fisheries production, increasing aquaculture production and competition for natural resources, countries must be accountable for what they consume rather than what they produce. To investigate the sustainability of seafood consumption, we propose a methodology to examine the impact of seafood supply chains across national boundaries: the seafood consumption footprint. The seafood consumption footprint is expressed as the biomass of domestic and imported seafood production required to satisfy national seafood consumption, and is estimated using a multi-regional input output model. Thus, we reconstruct for the first time the global fish biomass flows in national supply chains to estimate consumption footprints at the global, country and sector levels (capture fisheries, aquaculture, distribution and processing, and reduction into fishmeal and fish oil) taking into account the biomass supply from beyond national borders.

Keywords: Aquaculture; Consumption footprint; Fish meal and fish oil; Fisheries; Multi-region input–output model.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Representation of the interactions between the different sectors showing the flow of seafood products (in million tonnes) and the share of the supply with domestic (blue) or international (grey) origin for 2011
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Production (light blue) and consumption (dark blue) footprint for the top 20 countries ranked according to their consumption (in million tonnes) for 2011 (note: freshwater and marine aquaculture productions are combined)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Per capita consumption footprint (kg) for the aquaculture (marine and fresh water origin, light blue), capture fisheries (dark blue) and fishmeal (green) sectors in absolute terms and as proportions (%) of the total consumption footprint for the top 6 countries ranked according to their consumption in 2011. First column of each country refers to the total per capita consumption footprint, the second one refers to the total per capita consumption footprint satisfied with domestic production and third one with external trade
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