Asia-Pacific Fishery Commission

This multidisciplinary glossary has been prepared by the Inland Water Resources and Aquaculture Service (FIRI) of FAO Fisheries Department. The glossary contains a welath of aquacultureterms and definitions, which can be searched alphabetically or by thematic area. The primary objectives of this glossary are

1. to serve as a reference to fish farmers, consultants, administrators, policy makers, developers, engineers, agriculturists, economists, environmentalists and anybody interested in aquaculture; and

2. to facilitate communication among experts and scientists involved in aquaculture research and development.

The glossary is published both in hardcopy and on-line at the FAO website.

National Aquaculture Legislation Overviews (NALO) are now available online - a series of country reports on aquaculture legislation, prepared by the Development Law Service in collaboration with the Fisheries Department for the top-40 producing nations.

This excellent reference source contains overviews of the legislation coovering the aquaculture sector in the top 40 producing countries of the world. Information is also linked to the original legal references which are contained in FAOLEX.

The Network of Aquaculture Centres in Central-Eastern Europe (NACEE) is a voluntary association of Central and Eastern European aquaculture institutions, in which all members maintain their full independence. Activities are coordinated by the Research Institute for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Irrigation (HAKI) of Hungary. All member institutions assign a liaison person (speaking English and Russian) who is in regular contact with the coordinating institution HAKI.

The website carries news of the activites of the netwrok and its partners. Importantly there arelinks to all the participating aquaculture institutions.

PAPUSSA is a collaborative research project between European and Asian partners funded by the European Union seeking to better understand the importance and nature of aquatic food production that occurs in and around some of the major cities of Southeast Asia.

What are peri-urban aquatic food production systems and why are they important?

Aquatic food products are important in the diets of people of the region and include a variety of vegetables, fish and other animals. The origins of farming aquatic animals in the Region are quite likely to be urban since until recently most rural areas of Asia where people value fish as food had access to abundant natural stocks.

Urbanisation in SE Asia is occurring most rapidly in larger cities typically situated on the floodplains of large rivers. Limited drainage infrastructure and formal sanitation serving such cities, together with the extraction of fill from surrounding areas for construction and flood defences has frequently resulted in peri-urban wetlands that become both de facto waste treatment and food production systems. Such peri-urban wetlands have been important food production centres and appear to have enduring importance to the livelihoods of poor people. By the same token these peri-urban lagoons, canals and ponds commonly provide the only accessible means of disposing of human excreta and therefore have much broader importance to urban communities. Although attention has been drawn to the benefits of such wetlands, generally their value is unmeasured and impacts of contamination from wastes, changing access and urbanisation unknown.

Informed policy and management of peri-urban zones in Asia is handicapped by a lack of informed and balanced debate regarding how stakeholders value aquatic production systems in terms of public health risks, food availability and livelihoods. The lack of information about these systems contrasts with an extensive knowledge base on solid waste and wastewater reuse in agriculture.

This website contains a reange of infromaton resources relating to the subject to of peri-urban aquatic prooduction.

SEAPlant.Net has been conceived as a means for meeting needs that could not have been satisfied as recently as five years ago. We utilize newly emerging seaplant technologies and enabling technologies to identify SEAsian areas of comparative advantage and provide means by which SME can utilize these to achieve competitive advantage. The mission of SEAPlant.Net is to provide facilitating tools and enabling solutions that encourage and support the formation and operation of sustainable, profitable value chains linking South East Asian seaplant enterprises to global markets for seaweeds and seaplant products.

The scope of SEAPlant.Net embraces sustainable value chains that are founded on seaweeds and other seaplants and lead to products that give good value to end users.

The focus of SEAPlant.Net is on enabling and facilitation alliance networks among micro, small and medium enterprises. This is consistent with the mission of the PENSA program of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which supports SEAPlant.Net and other SME linkage programs in Indonesia.
SEAPlant.Net is based in Indonesia but has developing hubs in the Philippines, Malaysia and has "spokes" that extend to other countries in tropical tropical countries in Asia and the rest of the world. SEAPlant.Net is developing strategic alliances with private companies and organisations that have complementary core resources and common cause with SEAPlant.Net. First and foremost among these alliances is that with PENSA but as SEAPlant.Net develops it will strive to serve bridging, facilitating and enabling roles in and ever-expanding seaplant enterprise network.

SEAPlant.Net products are being developed as enabling solutions that provide information and tools that create an environment where value chains can function. They support the execution of core functions and the undertaking of properly governed transaction links by enterprises involved in seaplant value chains