Aquaculture innovation system analysis of transition to sustainable intensification in shrimp farming

Abstract

The shrimp sector has been one of the fastest growing agri-food systems in the last decades, but its growth has entailed negative social and environmental impacts. Sustainable intensification will require innovation in multiple elements of the shrimp production system and its value chain. In this paper, the authors take the shrimp sector in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam as a case to analyze the constraints on transforming the sector toward sustainable intensification. The objective of the paper is to employ an innovation systems analysis framework to first identify the types of constraints to sustainable intensification in shrimp farming and the stakeholders that reproduce those constraints, and then analyze how those constraints are interlinked and create blocking mechanisms that hinder innovation toward sustainable intensification.