Summary

Over the past fifteen years, the shrimp farming industry has rapidly expanded to meet growing consumer demand in the United States, Europe and Japan. This uncontrolled expansion has caused extensive environmental damage and social upheaval in several tropical developing coastal countries in Asia and Latin America.

Problem Statement

In a 1995 review of the state of world aquaculture, The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) characterized the problems as follows: "The inexorable global expansion of marine shrimp farming generated by market demand, short-term gain and government support because of export earnings has brought with it super-intensive systems, nomadic farmers, environmental and sociological disputes, water quality and disease problems and crashes in the production of some countries."

Vital coastal wetlands and farmlands are destroyed by shrimp farms. During operations a `toxic soup' of waste and pollution is generated through the intensive application of feeds, fertilizers, and other chemicals which is discharged, with shrimp feces, into surrounding areas - posing environmental and human health threats. Draining brackish wastewater from ponds is also responsible for salinization of agricultural land and freshwater reservoirs and/or groundwater supplies. Extraction of large amounts of freshwater from underground supplies can result in damaging hydrological impacts, such as major land subsidence, and compound the problem of salinization of freshwater aquifers near the coast.

Biodiversity threats arise when large areas of coastal habitats are transformed into shrimp farms - for example, mangroves are vital as fish rearing and feeding grounds, and also provide overwintering grounds for many migratory birds. Other biodiversity threats result from reductions and genetic changes in wild populations of the cultured species, the introduction of exotic species into the environment, contamination of the surrounding environment by disease and/or pharmaceuticals introduced into the production cycle (e.g., dissemination of antibiotics in medicated feeds) to fight them, and predator control (i.e., deliberate culls of predators and introduction of chemicals to control predators and pests).

The heavy reliance of shrimp aquafeed on fishmeal also means increasing competition for dwindling fisheries resources. Social conflict in areas where shrimp farms take over is intensifying. Affected communities are dispossessed of several vital resources over which they had traditional rights based on long-standing use patterns - e.g., for rice lands, mangrove forests and freshwater supplies. Displaced families (traditional fishers and farmers) are often forced to resort to destructive fishing methods or improper methods of husbandry to extract livelihoods from areas that are diminishing in size and deteriorating in quality. Otherwise, displaced rural families migrate to cities in the hope of finding jobs, contributing to the growing urban migration crisis being confronted in the developing world.

Some Key Facts

• Shrimp Producers in 1995
  • (% of World Production/Production - metric tons)
  • Thailand (31%/220,000)
  • Ecuador (14%/100,000)
  • Indonesia (11%/80,000)
  • China (10%/70,000)
  • India (8.5%/60,000
  • Vietnam (7%/50,000)
  • Bangladesh (4%/30,000)
  • Others (14.5%/112,000)
  • total of 100%/712,000 metric tons.
• Shrimp Trade: Shrimp is the single most valuable seafood product traded internationally - about 900,000 tons enters international trade worth about seven billion dollars a year (about 18 percent of the value of all global fisheries exports). Even though farmed shrimp is only about 1/4th of total annual shrimp production, it constitutes nearly 1/2 of all shrimp traded internationally. The U.S. and Japan consume the bulk of the world's farmed shrimp (e.g. it's estimated that up to 1/2 of all shrimp sold in the U.S. is imported farmed shrimp), and European consumption is growing rapidly.
• Destruction: More than a million hectares (2.5 million acres) of ecologically vital coastal wetlands, including mangrove forests, have been destroyed during the course of shrimp aquaculture's rapid expansion. An example can be seen in Thailand -- the world's leading shrimp farming country. An AP article from May 8, 1995 quotes Santi Bang-oa, assistant secretary-general of Thailand's National Economic and Social Development Board, saying that about 634,000 acres of his country's 950,000 acres of mangrove forests had been destroyed by years of shrimp farm construction, and that about 1/4th of the shrimp farms built are abandoned after a period and that the soil left behind is useless for other purposes.
• Unsustainable: A recent important World Bank funded study on the sustainability of Thailand's shrimp aquaculture industry produced by the private consulting firm MIDAS came to this frank conclusion: "An analysis of the development of the intensive shrimp farming industry in southeast Asia...has highlighted the historical unsustainability of the industry....the unsustainable nature of the Thai intensive shrimp industry has resulted in decreasing pond production, increased crop and farm failure...and environmental and socio-economic degradation." (page 49, MIDAS Report, 1995).
• Wasteful: Farmed shrimp feed utilizes large amounts of fresh fish. It takes about four kilograms of fresh fish ground into meal to produce one kilogram of cultured shrimp. Thus, shrimp farming, nutritionally, is a wasteful net loss of protein.
• Jobs lost: An economics study at Chittagong University in Bangladesh revealed that shrimp farming often displaces more jobs than it creates. Cultivating 100 acres of land with rice employs 50 workers, while cultivating shrimp on the same land employs just five workers. Consequently, aquaculture drives urbanization. Shrimp farming in Bangladesh's coastal Satkhira region displaced 40 percent of the area's 300,000 inhabitants to the country's overcrowded cities.

Greenpeace's Involvement in the Issue

Twice in recent years Greenpeace has sent protest ships to the Gulf of Fonseca on the Pacific coast in Central America to support local communities fighting uncontrolled proliferation of shrimp farms. We currently work with other concerned local and international groups to formalize a global alliance opposed to shrimp farming, and has helped organize several conferences involving concerned local, national and international groups, such as the NGO Forum on Shrimp Aquaculture held in Choluteca, Honduras in October 1996 attended by 21 NGOs from Latin America, India, Europe and the U.S. The Choluteca Declaration was adopted outlining major demands including the call for a GLOBAL MORATORIUM on new shrimp farm construction and an end to human rights abuses caused by the shrimp farming industry. Greenpeace lobbies at various UN related conferences and assemblies dealing with sustainable development, fisheries and oceans protection seeking recognition and resolution of the problems being caused by shrimp aquaculture.

Solutions

By failing to act to protect coastal and marine environments from the destructive impacts of shrimp aquaculture, governments are failing to meet the challenges contained in their 1992 Earth Summit commitments.

Greenpeace is focusing on two key objectives for immediate government action

1. an immediate halt to the expansion of new shrimp farm construction that fails to comply with environmental and social sustainability criteria set down in the Choluteca Declaration of October 1996
2. a broad, worldwide commitment by governments and the private sector to a transition over the next few years to ecologically responsible and socially sustainable shrimp aquaculture, to include the winding down of all current shrimp farming operations worldwide that fail to comply within a five-year time frame with environmental and social sustainability requirements set down in the Choluteca Declaration. Additionally, the companies that invest in shrimp farm development and the seafood traders that buy, sell and profit from shrimp must comply with purchasing criteria and practices that are consistent with NGO demands for environmental and social sustainability.

Relevant Reports

Greenpeace. Shrimp - The Devastating Delicacy, 1997.
Available in print from GP USA (TEL: 1.202.462.1177; fax:1.202.462.4507;
or on the Worldwide Web

Key Contacts

Greenpeace International Fisheries Campaign,
Matthew Gianni, tel: 1 415 512 9025, fax: 1 415 512 8699 e-mail: Matthew.Gianni@dialb.greenpeace.org,

Mike Hagler, tel/fax: 64.9.445.2548, e-mail: Mike.Hagler@dialb.greenpeace.org.