Millenium Development Goals and aquaculture: indicators to evaluate conservation of the resource base for poverty reduction

Environmental sustainability is the foundation on which strategies for achieving the remaining Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can be accomplished. Environmental degradation is causally linked to problems of poverty, hunger, gender inequality and health. MDGs are interconnected through the environment. Protecting and managing the natural resource base that supports aquaculture are essential for economic and social development in poor countries. Integrating the principles and practices of environmental sustainability into national policies and planning programmes is therefore a key to successful poverty reduction strategies. This paper provides methods for evaluating proposed changes to the aquaculture sector which can be used as tools themselves or converted into indicators to evaluate the contribution of smallscale aquaculture to poverty reduction through sustainable rural development. The requirement for indices of aquaculture management for poverty reduction and achieving sustainability of natural resources base is highlighted. The simple methodology suggests a number of approaches to identify and quantify the environmental and socio-economic variables related to aquaculture which could be used to develop indices for evaluating performance.