Floodplains of the future
The floodplains of the world's great rivers are a fertile ground for farmers and fishermen alike. No wonder, despite the dangers, they are so
densely populated, often by some of the poorest people in the world. And, as populations rise, so too does the proportion of landless, those who must
depend solely on fishing for their livelihood.
Any threat to
fish stocks makes their precarious existence even more vulnerable and yet, as Ian Payne of DFID's Fisheries Management Science Programme
reports, with the right information in the right hands, it need cost nothing to make the livelihoods of the fishing people a little more secure.
Bangladesh is dominated by three great river systems: the Ganges, Brahmaputra and the Meghna. In severe floods, 40% of the country is under water. At least 30 million live on and derive their livelihood from the floodplain. They have no other choice. Although it is extremely difficult to monitor fish stocks because, unlike the sea, the flood water comes and goes and varies from year to year, what is clear is that the abundance of major carps, the most important fish species in southern Asia, has dropped from 50% of the catch to 5% and, in some areas, has disappeared completely.
Work by the Fisheries Management Science Programme has shown that if fishing was cut by half, the amount of fish caught would eventually go up by 80%. But is it realistic to ask half the people to stop fishing or ask all of them them to fish for only half the time? Clearly not, but, says Ian Payne, it has been possible, working through local communities, to suggest ways of modifying fishing practices to give fish stocks a chance to recover. What is important is that people are given control over their own resources and know that they, and not someone else, will benefit.
DFID and the World Bank recently funded a large Government of Bangladesh programme to restock the floodplains with fish. Technically this is effective but, despite research which shows that it is not only cheaper, but also more effective, to liberate large numbers of small fish rather than larger juveniles, it is still an expensive solution.
A relatively low cost, although perhaps not a simple answer, is to take advantage of a trend that might otherwise be seen as detrimental to fish stocks. Much of the floodplain is being converted into polders, or compartments, through which the water is regulated for growing rice. Major carp can and do get into the polders but only in small numbers. If the sluice gates, which control the water between the polders and the river, were opened at the time when the breeding fish are swimming upstream, far more could find their way in. This could be done with no harm to the rice and would be of direct benefit to the fishing communities and, not least, to the many rice farmers who also fish.
However, in Bangladesh the sluice gates are controlled by village committees, composed largely of people from a farming background. If people from the fishing community, armed with the necessary information to make their case, were invited to join the committee and take part in the decision process, the boost to fish stocks could be significant. But, as Ian Payne points out, this has to be done by consensus and, at the end of the day, it is up to the people themselves to work it out.
