| Abstract: | This paper reviews the recently enacted Chilean National Aquaculture Policy (NAP). It goes through its central objective, summarises its main components and points out the main actions already underway by the government in the process of implementing this policy. The paper underlines the fact that this is one of the few national policies around the world explicitly setting Sustainable Development (SD) as its central and main objective. The paper also points out two main weaknesses worthy of discussion. The first weakness is the partial way in which the NAP focuses equity and the effect that not properly recognising the existence of 'resource rent' or 'user cost' may have on the final pursued objective. The second weakness is the fact that presently the NAP lacks a proper approach to deal with the complex spatial, multifactor, ecosystems, dynamic and anthropocentric nature of aquaculture. |
