Aquaculture Going Circular

Aquaculture is going circular.

On November 9th 2021, Participants joined us for an informative and collaborative event, discussing Circularity with high-level thinkers, circular economy experts, and leading aquaculture experts.

How do we understand circularity within the aquaculture framework?

How can circularity become part of daily business for the aquaculture industry?

Who are the existing key actors, and what can we learn from their experiences?

What policy messages are needed to ensure these actions are supported by regulators, officials, and the European Commission to make aquaculture more circular?

Through this discussion, we developed a comprehensive recommendation to policy makers at EU level. 

Vojtěch Vosecky is an Associate of Circle Economy, Co-founder of circular consultancy INCIEN, chair of the CE steering group @ city of Prague. He has worked on circular economy related issues in the European Parliament and currently works as Circle Economy’s Associate focused on Nordics and the CEE. Vojtěch leads an expert team on circular economy for the city of Prague and collaborates with numerous other organisations. He is a member of the international groups such as Circular Economy Club and the Visegrad for Sustainability.

Birgit Van Tongelen, Senior expert – Aquaculture at European Commission DG Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, studied Veterinary Medicines in the Ghent State University in Belgium. After graduation, she practiced as a veterinarian in the UK and in Belgium. In 2000 she joined the European Commission where she worked in several services (DG Environment, DG Health & Food Safety and DG Research).
In 2018 she started working in DG MARE where she joined the aquaculture team. She is mainly responsible for fish health, fish welfare, and research and innovation.

Tanja Hoel, Director of Business Operations, Hatch Innovation Services.

Zora Kovacic is a postdoctoral fellow at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and associate professor II at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT), University of Bergen. Her research focuses on how the uncertainty and complexity of urgent and emerging sustainability challenges affect the relationship between science and policy. She has worked on energy transitions, circular economy, and informal urbanism.

Éva Enyedi, Water Scarcity Project Manager/Future Funding, EIT Climate-KIC.

Killian Chary is an ecologist interested in environmental sustainability assessment applied to agri / seafood sectors, particularly to address development issues and to support both the productive sector and decision-makers. His Ph.D. at Ifremer (France) aimed to develop an integrated method based on modeling tools to assess and compare the local and global impacts of different aquaculture scenarios in Mayotte Islands. This research as well as subsequent postdoc experience in Ifremer were largely focused on estimating ecological carrying capacity in finfish aquaculture. Since April 2021, he works with the Aquaculture and Fisheries group in WUR as a post-doc researcher to work on sustainability and circularity in aquatic food systems.

Prof. Béla Urbányi is full time professor, head of the campus, director of the Institute of Aquaculture and Environmental safety at the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences is the largest agriculture universities in Hungary. Currently he is involved in the coordination of several research and innovation projects at the Institute (nationally and internationally), assignment of new research directions, relationship building and maintaining with farming enterprises and industrial companies, development of alternative solutions to occurring problems.

Davíð Tómas Davíðsson, R&D and Quality Manager, Codland

Björgólfur Hávarðsson, Innovation Manager, The Seafood Innovation Cluster

Tamás Bardócz, RDI Director, AquaBioTech Group