Aquaculture now supplies nearly 60% of global seafood, making the assessment of its biodiversity impacts crucial—especially under the new EU CSRD biodiversity reporting requirements. However, there are currently no standardized methods for evaluating these impacts. While third-party certifications like ASC provide verified impact data and promote transparency, they cover less than 4% of global aquaculture production.

To address this gap, we developed a qualitative method that enables the assessment of biodiversity impact risk in aquaculture. This approach is based on the five direct drivers of biodiversity loss identified by IPBES and uses a risk-based, tiered structure depending on data availability and specificity. When necessary, these five drivers were broken down into sub-drivers to improve clarity and applicability.