Informing on consistent EIA

The ECASA tool-box - informing on EIA and site selection in European Marine Aquaculture

During the last review on the application and effectiveness of the member states in implementing the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) directives (85/337/EEC and 97/11/EC), it was recommended that systems and procedures be put in place to improve the quality of the EIA process and the resultant Environmental Statement (ES). Member states have adopted differing approaches to improving the quality of EIA and ES’s; some have stipulated that developers may only use certified experts to carry out the EIA, others that the EIA process is assessed by an EIA expert with specialist knowledge. However throughout Europe, there is a continuing trend for the marine aquaculture industry to employ external environmental consultants to carry out EIAs.     

An overview of the processes underpinning EIA and its application for aquaculture

Whatever agencies or individuals are employed to carry out an EIA they will need to accurately identify the actual impacts of aquaculture on the environment and then apply the most appropriate environmental indicators, models and procedures to predict the significance of these impacts and recommend suitable mitigation measures to minimise these impacts to an acceptable level. The ECASA Tool-Box can be a useful resource for informing environmental impact assessors on the most appropriate tools to employ. The ECASA Tool-Box contains a suite of indicators and predictive environmental models whose focus will be to aid the assessment of appropriate sites for aquaculture activities and then subsequently provide a consistent framework for the application of EIA, resulting in coherent and relevant Environmental Statements. The Tool-Box provides advice on the merits of the chosen indicator set for a particular species/culture/location combination including best methodologies for collection, analysis and interpretation, and on the recommended set of models, including criteria for choice of models depending on spatial scale and farm size, and guidance on the use of models to estimate site and water body assimilative capacity and sustainable production, and on the reliability of model predictions

By employing the environmental tools contained in the ECASA Tool-Box, environmental impact assessors will inject a level of consistency to the EIA of marine aquaculture in Europe, aiding the interpretation of the results by coastal planners and simplifying the process.

In employing the contents of the ECASA Tool-Box, Environmental Consultants will be applying an ecosystem approach to assessing environmental impacts, and using tools that have been tested and validated in the field. For more information on the validation process go to the The Science behind ECASA.

Field testing and study site reports

Throughout the summer of 2006 the proposed indicators were tested in 13 countires across Europe. Follow the links in the table below to go to the Study Site Reports. These reports have been written in the style of an Environmental Impact Assessment, with the Reports following the format on an Environmental Statement.

In total some 56 environmental indicators have been scrutinised for their applicability over a range of sites, species, culture methods and locations. In addition to these indicators existing dynamic mathematical models have been further developed to establish the functional relationship between environment and aquaculture activities. The result is a Tool-Box containing a tested set of tools for describing, interpreting, predicting and managing the environmental impacts of marine aquaculture in Europe.

You may also be interested in looking at the other introductory materials available from this site:

• Shell and fin fish farm managers 
• Regulators of aquaculture
• Members of the public
• Scientists - if you are interested in the methods used by ECASA to make and test these tools
• About the ecosystem approach as perceived and used by ECASA
• About the definitions of scales - read this to understand the difference between farm scale, water body scale, regional scale

The following links provide a further list of links to Models, Indicators and Case Studies of relevance to farming several species:

• Models that have been tested for salmon, cod, sea bass, sea bream, oyster and mussel farms
• Indicators that have been tested for salmon, cod, sea bass, sea bream, oyster and mussel farms
• Case studies on salmon, cod, sea bass, sea bream, oyster and mussel farms
• Other useful documents relevant to salmon, cod, sea bass, sea bream, oyster and mussel farms

The following are links to study site reports by region:

• Atlantic/Baltic
• Mediterranean