Aquaculture is an established, evolving industry in Aotearoa, with an inherent environmental footprint across marine and freshwater environments. The industry continues to see growing expectations to responsibly manage environmental impacts from regulators, communities and the market.
Recognising the need to demonstrate commitment to sustainability and advance environmental performance across the industry, Aquaculture New Zealand (AQNZ) engaged Morphum’s sustainability team to develop industry-wide environmental management frameworks. These frameworks were developed for three different aquacultural industries:
The team anchored each framework to global science-based research on best-practices and standards. Using the principles of ISO 14001, the International Standard of Optimisation (ISO) for Environmental Management Systems, our sustainability consultants could ensure that these frameworks reflected globally recognised best practices, while tailoring them to the New Zealand context.
Embedded into the frameworks was an ISO 14001-aligned cycle of continuous improvement, providing structured guidance on how to plan, implement, assess and review their environmental performance ongoing.
Each of these industries came with unique risks, and impacts that would need to be managed to improve the impact on the environment. Despite the differences the overall objectives were consistent between them, based on which our sustainability team created a consistent methodology that could be applied across the industries, with tailored risk managements, aspects and impacts.
The consistent structure across them included clear environmental impact indicators such as:
These frameworks were delivered with self-assessment checklists and best practice operational procedures, to provide aquaculture operators with the practical tools that they need to manage their environmental impacts. These self-assessment checklists were integrated to a central reporting platform that supported AQNZ in aggregating and reviewing performance data across the industry and enabled reporting on trends. These reports would help provide transparency with government, market and community, thereby supporting legal compliance and securing social license.
At the same time, to support the verification and credibility improvements from environmental management projects, Morphum developed an independent auditing procedure and a matrix that would support the integration of certifications to the industry.
In the end, three frameworks were delivered for three unique aquaculture industries, with the guidance, tools and reporting to improve the impacts on te taiao across the country.
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