New Delhi, Sep 12 (IANS) Over 50 countries have reached an informal accord on farmed shrimp norms that could ease export hurdles for developing countries like India and generate better incomes for farmers, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Monday.

While environmentalists oppose shrimp farming for its environmental impacts, millions of small-scale producers in the poorest countries, who produce 99 percent of the world's farmed shrimp, depend on it for their livelihood.

Seeking to strike a balance between the environmental concerns and economic demands, over 50 countries attending a FAO meeting on fish farming here last week have "welcomed a series of non-binding international principles for responsible shrimp farming which offer guidance on how to reduce the sector's environmental impacts while boosting its contribution to poverty alleviation," the organisation said.

Drawn up in a five-year consultative process involving several global partner organisations, the new principles adopted at the third meeting of the FAO Sub-Committee on Aquaculture held in New Delhi Sep 4-8 represents the first-ever attempt to provide an overarching international framework for improving the sustainability of the shrimp farming industry.

Out of the global trade in aquaculture worth $63 billion in 2004, India's share was $1.4 billion. India is the 19th largest exporter of fish and fish products. The bulk of these exports consist of crustaceans, mainly shrimps, with the US, Japan, mainland China, Spain, Belgium and Britain as the main markets.

The consumer demand for shrimps in northern markets is at a record high, with the developing world accounting for exports worth $8.7 billion a year.

"We hope that these new principles will help pave the way for a more common vision of how we should define responsible shrimp farming globally," said Rohana Subasinghe, a senior aquaculture expert at FAO and secretary of the sub-committee.

"They can also serve as a point of reference for governments, NGOs and private industry who are developing systems to certify farm-raised shrimp as eco-friendly or sustainable, or who are looking to harmonise systems that are already in place," he added.

The new principles touch on a number of environment-related issues, including the setting of farms and their design, the use of resources like water and feed, as well as the social impacts of aquaculture on local communities.

"While not slated for formal adoption by national delegations participating in the third meeting of the FAO Sub-Committee on Aquaculture, there was general consensus that the principles should be relied upon as a global point of reference for aquaculture policy and development," the FAO stated.

The new set of standards would seek to replace a plethora of standards that were creating confusion.

According to Subasinghe, the challenge for the next decade is to develop specific recommendations for better management practices that will allow producer countries to implement the new principles in the field.

"FAO will be giving a lot of attention to this in the coming years, with an eye to seeing management practices put into place around the world that are grounded in these principles and therefore all on the same page," he said.

Countries participating in the sub-committee have asked FAO to come up with new statistical indicators to better measure the social and economic impacts of fish farming which accounts for nearly 50 percent of marine food.