Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
sharing responsibility for raising environmental and ethical performance levels and
spreading the financial burden of certification. The success of cluster certification
is vital to the BAP programme's success, particularly in Asia (Boyd et al. 2006).
Development of the BAP shrimp farm standards involved a lengthy period of
consultation with industry experts, academics and representatives from a range
of NGOs including the World Wildlife Fund. An initial draft was designed to be
very comprehensive but was deemed unnecessarily complex and was simplified to
provide a greater focus on the most pressing concerns. The resulting BAP standards
are designed as far as possible to be SMART - specific, measurable, achievable,
realistic and time-related, in line with best practice in standard development in other
industries. They are written in plain language to limit subjective interpretation and
to improve transparency and credibility. The auditing system incorporates a scoring
process that is also designed to promote objectivity. Points are awarded according
to the level of compliance with individual criteria and are summed to make a total
that must exceed a minimum level if a facility is to achieve BAP certification. But
very importantly, certain critical items, for example those dealing with mangroves,
effluents, antibiotics and hatchery seed, are mandatory and failure to satisfy any
one of them results in automatic failure, irrespective of the total number of points
scored.
The BAP shrimp farm standards address the major environmental and social
concerns generated by shrimp farming and so they have the potential to greatly
improve the environmental and social acceptability of aquaculture. For example,
among other things, the BAP shrimp farm standards specify:
no net loss of mangroves;
no use of wild post-larvae;
traditional access by local inhabitants must not be restricted;
effluent discharges must meet specific water-quality standards;
groundwater must not be contaminated;
accurate records must be kept for chemical storage, use and disposal;
banned antibiotics must not be used;
therapeutic agents must not be used prophylactically; and
dredged sediments must be contained.
Certain requirements of the BAP programme serve to reinforce the application of
existing environmental and social legislation that, in some developing countries,
may not be enforced consistently. Other requirements go far beyond legal obliga-
tions, so the BAP programme cannot be characterised as a minimalist approach.
Unlike some organic standards, such as those drafted by Naturland of Germany
and the Soil Association of the UK, the BAP standards do not place restrictions on
stocking densities. GAA takes the view that such restrictions are arbitrary and more
intensive operations should not be excluded from ecolabelling schemes if they can
satisfy compliance criteria. Indeed, it is often the more intensive farms that make
technological advances in the efficient use of water, feed and seed. Also, given
Search WWH ::




Custom Search