Environmental efficiency spillover and externalities of aquaculture farms: Analyses of key aquaculture industries in Vietnam and Chile

The blooming of aquaculture production, despite contributing greatly to food security and economic growth, gave rise to various environmental problems that affect the industry itself, people’s well-being and ecosystems. Although pollution from aquaculture farming can be mitigated by environment-friendly practices with more efficient input uses (e.g., water, feed and chemical) and better treatments of wastewater at farm-level, it is not clear how those improvements spread among farms in developing countries, given that they are mostly small-scale. We propose research to analyze both environmental externalities and efficiency spillovers of aquaculture farms in Vietnam and Chile. Our production models allow for the spillover of environmental efficiency (i.e., how efficiently they use inputs that have detrimental effects on the environment, in their production) and the spatial dependence of farms’ input uses, while our externality analysis looks at the negative effects of aquaculture on other farming activities and people’s health. Household surveys will be conducted in important aquaculture sites of Vietnam. A sample of 600-800 households (about 200-400 households with shrimp ponds and 400 households of other farming activities). The questionnaire focuses on the production process and the interaction between aquaculture and other aspects of local life. In Chile, research work will rely on data from previous surveys at the farm level and spatial farm data publicly available. The project will produce at least two EfD discussion papers with the potential for peer-reviewed publication; high-quality, shareable datasets for future research; as well as academic seminars and policy briefs that will be useful for policy-making toward aquaculture development and environment protection in studied countries.