Navigating Governance and Sustainability in Global South Aquaculture

Aquaculture is expanding rapidly across the Global South and has become central to food security, employment, and export earnings. Yet sustainability outcomes are increasingly shaped not only by production practices, but by governance across the value chain: public regulation, private standards, and hybrid arrangements that determine how environmental and social requirements are interpreted, implemented, and verified.In many countries, governance remains fragmented across agencies and jurisdictions, enforcement capacity is uneven, and compliance requirements can be complex and costly for small-scale actors. Challenges related to food safety, traceability, labor conditions, ecosystem impacts, and market access often intersect, creating gaps between policy intent and on-the-ground realities. These governance dynamics influence who benefits from aquaculture growth and how resilient the sector is to shocks.Aquaculture governance is also increasingly influenced by geopolitical developments. Conflict in the Middle East may affect energy prices, feed and fertilizer markets, and shipping systems that support aquaculture value chains in the Global South. Higher costs and trade disruptions can place additional pressure on regulatory oversight and compliance, particularly in contexts where governance systems are fragmented. In this setting, strengthening the capacity of governance systems to anticipate and respond to external shocks may support more resilient, sustainable, and equitable aquaculture development.This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of how governance can enable sustainable and equitable aquaculture value chains in the Global South. We seek contributions that analyze where and why existing governance arrangements fall short, such as overlapping regulations, weak coordination, limited monitoring, or misaligned incentives, and how these constraints affect competitiveness, livelihoods, and environmental performance. A particular focus is on how governance can be made both credible to regulators and markets and feasible for producers, especially smallholders.The collection welcomes evidence on recent advances, including risk-based and participatory oversight, cluster or area-based management, group certification models, digital traceability systems, and locally anchored good aquaculture practice schemes (such as VietGAP and initiatives proposed in Bangladesh like BanglaGAP). We also encourage work that links governance to climate adaptation and risk management, including disease control, water quality governance, and resilience planning across shared landscapes and waters.We invite submissions that examine governance “from farm to market,” including interactions among producers, processors, traders, exporters, regulators, certifiers, and communities. Topics of interest include: legal and regulatory framework; policy coherence and enforcement; land and water-use conflicts; proper zoning and site selection planning; food safety and residue governance; traceability design and adoption; certification impacts and distribution of costs/benefits; labor and social safeguards; credit and insurance; power relations and inclusion (e.g., gender, youth, smallholder participation); environmental governance (effluents, biodiversity, siting); climate change and risk governance; and governance strategies that enhance climate resilience and promote equitable development. Topic editors: Mohammad Mahfujul Haque, Patrik John Gustav Henriksson Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79747/navigating-governance-and-sustainability-in-global-south-aquaculture