1. An introduction to the topic

There is widespread consensus amongst international fisheries research that the world's fish stocks are under serious threat (Pauly et al. 2005). With an estimated 25% of the worlds fish stocks over-exploited or decimated and a further 52% at full exploitation (FAO 2007), there is little hope for future increases in production and many questions about long term sustainability. Juxtaposed against this situation is the overwhelming reality of an increasing world population coupled with a rising demand for fish products as they are perceived world wide as a high quality, low cost form of protein. Aquaculture is commonly cited as the solution to the growing gap between supply and demand (e.g. Marra 2005).

The apparent success of the post-WWII technology focused "green revolution" in South-east Asia (Evenson and Gollin 2003) has spawned interest in the technological possibilities of aquaculture as the next step, coined the "blue revolution". The call for a blue revolution has been, over the past 20 years, widely incorporated into international development efforts resulting in many successful projects and institutions in South-east Asia. Aquaculture production in South-East Asia doubled between 1990 and 2000 (FAO 2007).

However, much of the spread of aquaculture has had unintended or detrimental side-effects. There are many questions about the environmental sustainability of aquaculture practices, particularly issues related to water pollution, competition and genetic impacts on wild populations, and drug and chemical usage. Additionally much of the expansion in aquaculture has been driven solely by economic considerations that ignore much of the local social diversity and can result in significant issues surrounding equity, power and knowledge (e.g. van Mulekom et al. 2006). As public perception of these issues increases, governments, NGOs and aquaculture producers alike are exploring new governance arrangements to allow continued growth of the aquaculture industry while reducing the negative impacts.

Recently, market based mechanisms for control of environmental and social aspects of production have become very popular, ideas like certification systems and international standards (Ponte and Gibbon 2005). The intent of these kinds of interventions is to create a clear measurable system that will promote positive changes in aquaculture practices by offering market incentives like increased profit, or better market access. Certification and standards systems like “organic”, “fair trade”, or “marine stewardship council”, are well established in other international food commodities, but are still underdeveloped in the aquaculture sector. This will not remain the status for long, as many programs are underway around the globe to develop universal standards for aquaculture.

The story of Vietnamese Pangasius (a kind of catfish, also called Basa or Tra) is a good example of the creation of new standards to change the environmentally and socially unsustainable practices of a rapidly developing aquaculture industry. The Pangasius industry located in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta has grown at an astonishing 35% per year in production volume, in 2007 exceeding an estimated 1.2 million metric tonnes (Bush, Khiem et al. in press). With this kind of production, and a very cheap cost of production, Vietnam has been able to capture large segments of the market, such that it is very easy for the average consumer to now find frozen Basa/Tra fillets all over the world.

Such amazing growth and market penetration has begun to attract international scrutiny. There are many unanswered questions about the social and environmental sustainability of such rapid growth. Many concerns have been raised about use of drugs on the farms, water pollution, exploitation of wild fish stocks for feed, and wage and labour inequalities. In response to this several international NGOs and fish trading companies have begun to develop and implement social and environmental certification programs of Pangasius aquaculture in Vietnam. Some examples are Naturland Organic Standards, GlobalGAP (formerly EUREPGAP) and Safe Quality Food (SQF) 1000 and 2000, which are more focused on food safety issues, but include elements of environmental and social sustainability, and the World Wildlife Fund’s Pangasius Aquaculture Dialogue which focuses almost exclusively on these issues (Mantingh and Dung 2008).

However hopeful or polished the proponents of certification and standards systems may be, it would be ill-advised to assume that they are the panacea that will solve all the problems of the aquaculture industry. Certainly there are many potential benefits in their implementation, and many agro-food industries have had varying degrees of success in market based control structures. However there are also many academic publications that have tracked problems created by certification and standards. For instance the technical realities of the situation can wreak havoc on planning when a required fix is too complicated to implement, or problems are being caused by unalterable natural conditions.  The societal situation in which standards are developed and introduced can also severely affect the process when there are inequalities in power that can lead preferential opportunities created for one group over another (Klooster 2006, Vandergeest 2007).

The creation and implementation of standards is heavily mediated by both realities (physical and social)  in the surrounding and the target system itself. It is important to realize that standards setters must define the boundaries their target system, which system participants to include in the standards and who will be responsible for implementing the desired changes. However it is a mistake to think that those responsible for changes are completely free to do as they wish, rather these actors are embedded in a broader reality that constrains their performance. Certification systems have been encouraged by the Vietnamese government, and championed by NGOs and industry associations to promote social and environmental sustainability in the Pangasius industry, however, these initiatives tend to be narrow in focus are proceeding on relatively limited data. Understanding how system actors, embedded in physical and social realities, interact and interplay within and outside the boundaries of certification is an important step toward the formulation of effective standards for social and environmental sustainability.This thesis an empirical evaluation of the embeddedness of Pangasius farmer performance in physical and social realities and how this interacts with the boundaries defined by proposed and operational certification systems in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

In order to accomplish it will be necessary to provide sufficient background material to contextualize the discussion, provide theoretical framework and define supporting concepts, and identify an analytical target. Subsequent postings will seek to illuminate these elements and then use them to formulate specific questions that will be pursued in the remainder of the thesis.