5. Vietnam and Pangasius

The story of the Vietnamese Pangasius industry is an excellent example of the success and accompanying impacts of aquaculture, and is now in the process of developing and implementing environmental and social sustainability certification. Since the shift towards economic liberalism in the mid-80’s Vietnam has experienced phenomenal economic growth on the world stage, particularly in agriculture exports benefiting from market liberalisation and land reforms. Aquaculture is one the export oriented activities that has seen the greatest expansion, with Vietnam currently experiencing the second fastest national aquaculture growth rate in the world. Pangasius, with its recent advances in husbandry and reproduction, is one of the species at the forefront of this dramatic “blue revolution” and has quickly become a major commodity with a well developed value-chain. However the dramatic growth of Vietnamese Pangasius farming has caused alarm amongst importing countries and consumers, which has lead retailers and NGOs to search for ways to guarantee long-term sustainability of the industry. The most popular solution that has received support from the Vietnamese government is the creation of certification systems, and there are currently many different schemes at various stages of development and implementation of in the country. As in other fish supply chains in developing countries, it remains to be seen if certification can help to bring environmental and social sustainability to the Vietnamese Pangasius industry.

Vietnam is an extremely dynamic country, and it’s economy is perhaps the most dynamic having experienced colonialism, civil war with international aid dependency, communist central planning and neo-liberal market driven phases over the last 60 years. The most recent phase of market driven capitalism was initiated in 1986 with the declaration of Doi Moi (Vietnamese for renovation), a new plan from the communist government to open up the economy to stimulate growth. When new economic policies were combined with agricultural land reform Vietnam began to experience massive economic growth, particularly in the production of agricultural commodities for export (van de Walle and Cratty, 2004). This trend still continues with Vietnam having the third fastest growing economy in Southeast Asia (ASEAN 2009) and as the communist party continues to deregulate and the world market continues to buy Vietnamese exports there will continue to growth and change in Vietnam’s agriculture sector.

Pangasius aquaculture is a dramatic example of the growth in the Vietnamese agro-exports. Pangasius is an ictalurid catfish native to the Mekong river system that has been fished and farmed on a small scale for a long time. In the 1990’s it was the target of concerted international development efforts to develop as an aquaculture industry, which led to establishment of reasonable husbandry and feeding practices and ultimately to perfection of artificial spawning techniques (Sinh 2007). This gave fish farmers the technical expertise and freedom from previous limitations of wild caught seed that when combined with Doi Moi and agricultural land reforms led to explosive growth and change beginning in the late 90’s and continuing until today. In 1997 the annual production of Pangasius was approximately 22,500 MT produced primarily from floating netcages on the Mekong, stocked with wild-caught seed and fed low-quality farm-made diets. In 2008 annual production surpassed an estimated 1,200,000 MT, the majority produced from captive bred individuals in land-based ponds and fed with advanced diet formulations (Mantingh and Dung 2008). This phenomenal 25% growth per year since 2000 has surprised many in the aquaculture industry and has led to questions about changing practices and intensification.

Indeed the intensification of Pangasius aquaculture in the Mekong seems to have occurred without much planning or direction, simply responding to a voracious market demand for cheap white fish fillets but international observers including NGOs, retailers and consumers have begun to question the long-term environmental and social sustainability of the industry. The Pangasius Aquaculture Dialogue website of the WWF lists 8 significant concerns, (presented here), which include water pollution, farm-stock escapes and health management, drug and chemical usage, feeding practices and labour practices. The truth is that very little information is available about these particular impacts in the Pangasius industry, and some of the concerns have been imported from other aquaculture debates. Regardless, the Pangasius industry has not always been able to provide satisfactory information to alleviate the concerns of international buyers and NGOs, who have now begun to develop certification systems to try to provide consistent answers to the questions they have. Bush et al. (in press) list at least eight different certification systems containing elements of environmental and social sustainability criteria, that are currently implemented or under development for the Vietnamese Pangasius industry. As Pangasius aquaculture continues to expand in Vietnam, some or all of these certification systems will seek to guide that development, though what that may look like is hard to predict.

It certainly is interesting to consider how the introduction of environmental and social certification systems to the dynamic Vietnamese Pangasius industry will interact with the existing practice and stimulate change. In order to proceed further with these ideas it is necessary to start to discuss the theoretical framework and concepts that I will use to provide analytical insight into the Pangasius farming industry and the environmental and social certifiers that are attempting to change it. In the next section I will introduce my theoretical ideas and concepts and describe the framework I will use for the rest of this thesis.

In my next post: a description of the concepts of boundaries and embeddedness…