A fish farm in Skåne is awarded this year’s WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award.
Al Gore, Kofi Annan, Gro Harlem Brundtland… many prestigious persons, businesses and organisations have received the award since 2000.
This year the award theme has been sustainable aquaculture, and the winners are perhaps not as well known globally as some earlier winners. The prize goes to Gårdsfisk, a small company in Skåne, southern Sweden.
Aquaculture is a rapidly growing global food branch that supplies the world’s population with about half of the fish, shellfish and algae consumed globally. But in Sweden, the industry is still small; more than 90 per cent of the farmed fish consumed in Sweden is imported, such as Norwegian salmon.
Freshwater fish
Gårdsfisk conducts fish farming in closed systems on land. From the jury’s motivation: “Gårdsfisk works with the value chain in its entirety, from breeding, farming and processing fish into attractive consumer products. By breeding tropical omnivorous fish that can utilise more plant-based ingredients in their feed, fast-growing animals can be bred with low environmental impacts.”
Gårdsfisk is found in a rural part of Sweden, but land-based fish farming can be placed everywhere, even in cities, as it doesn´t require much space and ordinary tap water can be used in the process. The fish species farmed by Gårdsfisk are Clarias and Tilapia, both African freshwater fish. The fish is sold in grocery stores and fish markets all over the country.
More sustainable
Even though land-based fish farming is a small industry in Sweden interest in fish farming is growing as it is more sustainable than commercial fishing and fish farming in lakes and at sea. Gårdsfisk uses recirculating systems to minimise water and energy use. Surplus nutrients from the fish are used in agriculture.
The 2022 WIN WIN Youth Award goes to the Colombian researcher Sara Gutierrez Plata who is engaged in restoring the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.
WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award is an idea that started as a joint thought from Gothenburg City’s then-time mayor and a leading regional businessman. Why not create a seventh Nobel prize for environmental contributions? However, the Nobel foundation declined the proposition, so they instead created Gothenburg International Environment Award, now labelled the WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award.
The award is a non-profit organisation financed by the City of Gothenburg, Region Västra Götaland and several member organisations and companies. The winner is appointed by an independent jury containing members with diverse backgrounds within academia, politics and civil society. One million SEK is given annually to promote outstanding contributions towards a more sustainable future.
