ASC Highlights Contribution Of Responsible Aquaculture To SDGs in UN’s Multi-stakeholder Forum

Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC)’s Director of Market Research & Insights Bertrand Charron spoke at the United Nation’s 8^th Annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) held in UN Headquarters in New York, USA yesterday, 3 May.

The STI Forum facilitates discussions on science, technology and innovation cooperation in support of the SDGs. Speaking as a stakeholder on behalf of ASC and Certification and Ratings Collaboration (CRC), Charron highlighted the importance of responsible aquaculture in achieving the SDGs, particularly in finding integrated solutions to make progress across SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation), 7 (Affordable and clean energy) and 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure).

“This is a great opportunity to highlight the role of transparent responsible seafood farming in addressing global issues and at the same time demonstrate how our work at ASC quantifiably contributes to achieving the SDGs through a verifiable and robust methodology,” Charron said.

In December 2022, ASC released a quantitative report that looks at how responsible aquaculture can contribute to the UN’s 17 SDGs and the 169 targets within. Our findings show that globally, ASC addresses targets within all 17 SDGs, and more than 80% of these are considered to be well or very well addressed.

To read ASC’s summary statement at the forum, you can watch this video or read the summary below:

“The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and the Certification and Ratings Collaboration (CRC) support ambitious sustainability systems and with their partners seek to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.

Collectively we advance scalable, credible and effective solutions making demonstrable impacts. Our work seeks to ensure that more seafood producers adopt a clear pathway towards sustainability. ASC is the world’s leading farmed seafood certification programme.

However, publicly available 3^rd party-assured credible sustainability data is rare at country and industry level… And this lack could hinder the monitoring and implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

Impacts-driven voluntary sustainability standards from Code-compliant members of the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance (ISEAL) also play a critical role in providing solutions to such gap: enabling small and large-scale producers make relevant and substantiated claims to the marketplace. They also empower consumers worldwide make informed sustainable and ethical purchasing decisions.

To find integrated solutions enabling progress across all SDGs, including SDGs 6, 7 and 9 — holistically and specifically at target level — we are committed to continuous improvement, transparency, multi-stakeholder engagement (including indigenous people), and science-based stringency. 

 We are committed to collaborating with academia by exploiting a first-of-its-kind methodology for a quantitative SDG performance study at the 169-target level. And to foster scientific innovation… to share with researchers vast amounts of independently verified, SDG-aligned, performance and geospatial data.

 We are intent on upscaling sustainable industrialisation, help provide much needed SDG and ESG data assurance… and thus also help prevent SDG-washing at Horizon 2030.”