Improving our understanding of social dimensions is key to the planning of future aquaculture systems: workshop report.

Any marine environmental concern is embedded in critical, complex social dimensions. These dimensions are however still often set aside, in studies defining solutions to the sustainable development challenge. This is despite the fact that, by moving beyond the sole description of natural processes, by focusing sustainability research on societal issues and stakes, and by opening the door to stakeholder engagement in the research process, social sciences can act as a key driving force of the interdisciplinary integration that is required in identifying such solutions.

How social sciences can contribute to further design the solution narratives requires bringing together multiple views. To this end, we assembled a group of scientific experts from multidisciplinary backgrounds, ranging from genomic research to ecological modelling and social science. Building on existing foresight studies of seafood systems for mainland France, New-Zealand, and small-island economies of the South Pacific, we invited these experts to envisage the possible futures of aquaculture systems under alternative scenarios, and to identify no-regret research strategies that would best support the sustainable development of this sector. Research on the social, economic and governance dimensions were considered to be key across all regional contexts and scenarios, lending ground to the observation that the importance of such research is well acknowledged by the scientific community. This result highlights the need to increase the resources devoted to further developing these research areas.