Bangladesh, BOBP

Bangladesh

for coastal fisheries management

Project Objective

In the context of conserving coastal fish resources and ensuring the sustainablility of coastal fisheries, to facilitate and enable improved management of the Estuarine Set Bag Net (ESBN) and Push Net (PN) fisheries in selected coastal areas of Bangladesh, through awareness building, strengthening the institutional capacity of concerned agencies and provision of technical assistance.

The Issues

The ESBN is a traditional fishery which not only provides livelihood to a large population of mostly poor rural inhabitants, but also provides a sizable proportion of the marine and brackish water capture fisheries production. The fishery provides most of the animal protein consumed by the rural poor. The ESBN fishery which interacts with at least seven other fisheries has been shown to be destructive, and could lead to growth and recruitment over-fishing of several important marine and brackish-water species.

The PN fishery is of more recent origin having evolved to supply Bangladesh's rapidly growing coastal aqua-culture industry with P. Monodon and M. Rosenbergii fingerlings. The fishery is very destructive, because over 90% of its catch consists of by-catch, made up of commercially important species of marine and brackish-water organisms, which are discarded and left to die on the beach. The fishery not only provides over 95% of the seed requirement of the coastal aqua-culture industry, which happens to be the second largest foreign exchange earner of Bangladesh, but also provides seasonal livelihood to several poor people most of whom are women and children. The Government of Bangladesh is under considerable pressure from trawler owners to ban the ESBN and PN fisheries as they feel the fisheries are destroying their potential yields.

Project Strategy

In the ESBN fishery the only available options to improve the management of the fishery are to reduce the fishing effort and attempting modification of the gear to make it less destructive. The possibility of achieving the latter seems difficult and more analysis is needed. The possibility of reducing effort, through closed seasons or closed areas not only depends on ESBN fishers and other stakeholders being aware of the need for, the benefits of and methods of management, but, more importantly, having alternative sources of income generation to ensure livelihood and food security. The project will focus on awareness building of stakeholders at all levels, promoting consultation and collective, negotiated decision making, in building the capacity of the DOF/FRI to undertake such efforts, and in undertaking a few pilot efforts of seasonal and area closures to test the feasibility of the idea and to gauge the social and economic implications of such initiatives.

The ideal management option for the PN fishery would be to ban it. This option is impossible given the coastal aquaculture sector's dependence on it and given the number of poor men, women and children who make a living from it. The project hopes to influence policy through awareness building and consultation amongst stakeholders to work towards sustainable aquaculture, based on hatchery produced seeds. In the meanwhile, the project will focus on working with the seed collectors and other stakeholders to reduce by-catch mortality and to reduce mortality in handling and transport of the target seeds.

Fishing is only one part of the lives of the coastal people's of Bangladesh. A variety of factors and actors, often far removed from fisheries, affect their food and livelihood security. The solutions to the fisheries management problem may well lie outside of the fisheries sector. A key strategy of the project will be to promote a more holistic and comprehensive policy perception that looks at the food and livelihood security of coastal peoples as a whole in determining options.

Assessment

The activities in Bangladesh are reasonably on schedule, progressing well in spite of delays in some components. The level of performance of the junior and middle level staff is high, and they are quite enthused about the project. The organizational culture of the department and managerial environment is often not conducive to supporting innovative and creative efforts such as fisheries management. Fund shortages are a major constraint, which makes not just national execution difficult but raises the question of post-project sustainability. The Marine Wing, responsible for implementation, does not have a presence at the implementation level, namely the district and Thana levels, and this will result in implementation problems. Testing of management initiatives will require issue of regulations, ordinances and notifications which can be delayed due to lengthy bureaucratic processes, and this can delay the project. Management initiatives, all of which depend on reduction of fishing effort, will succeed only if alternative income generation options exist and are accessible; initial indications are not very promising. Promoting alternative income generating schemes is a complex and expensive task requiring skill training, credit support, managerial assistance and marketing help, and without the support of other government agencies and donors it will be difficult for BOBP and DOF to justice to this task.

In spite of all these constraints and problems a lot has been achieved in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is the only member country of BOBP, wherein BOBP's Coastal Fisheries Management Project and the ODA's Post-Harvest Fisheries Project are working closely together, addressing the needs of the ESBN fisherfolk.

Fact Sheet

Functional Focus:	Management of ESBN and PN Fisheries.
Geographical Focus:	Coastal District of Bangladesh; Pilot efforts in Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar Districts.
Implementing Agencies:	Marine Wing of the Department of Fisheries (DOF); Marine Fisheries Survey, Development and Management Project (MSDMP) of the DOF; and Fisheries Research Institute(FRI).
National Project Coordinator:	Mr. Harun-or Rashid.

Please address any comments or suggestions to: bobpkcc@md2.vsnl.net.in