TOWARDS A PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF LIFE CYCLE SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS (LCSA)

As part of the on-going SEAT (Sustaining Ethical Aquaculture Trade) project, an integrated approach was developed for collecting life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle assessment (LCA) data for several actors throughout Asian aquaculture value chains. Parallel to this effort, also socioeconomic data were collected, but only for grow-out farms. Because of differences in the analytical approach for socio-economic impacts, a larger sample of 35 farmers per farming system was selected for livelihood surveys. Meanwhile, a wider vertical approach was taken for LCA and LCC data at sample sizes between five and ten. Several challenges were encountered with regards to sensitive topics, from economic information on farms, to the number of children in China, to the use of controversial chemicals. However, the overall outcome was an extensive database of - what could be called - aquaculture LCSA data.