Adaptive management of salmon aquaculture in British Columbia

Since the 1980s, disputes over the future of the aquaculture industry in British Columbia, Canada have reflected ecological complexities as well as uncertainties about the social, economic, and environmental consequences of alternative management decisions. In this research, the passive adaptive management approach is proposed to systematically address salmon aquaculture conflicts in British Columbia under uncertainty. The decision support system GMCR II, which is designed to analyze multiple-stakeholder disputes even in the face of high uncertainty, is employed within a passive management framework to identify better decisions using the graph model methodology. The analysis highlights two approaches to adaptive management as well as two ways of handling disagreements among stakeholders.