A pioneering scheme that could boost stocks of a fish that feeds millions of people in Bangladesh, India and Myanmar may be a model for other fisheries, but would be more effective if it changed in five ways, says a new study.
The research by London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), published on Wednesday focuses on the hilsa fish and a scheme the Bangladesh government through which fishing communities are compensated to conserve the threatened species.
The scheme is a rare example of “payments for ecosystem services” (PES) from a fishery. Most PES schemes focus on paying people who protect forests because of the benefits this brings to downstream water users. The programme is managed without donor assistance.
This research and publication was part-funded by the UK government and Defra’s Darwin Initiative.
“Most governments use regulations to manage their fisheries, but Bangladesh has combined this stick with the carrot of compensation,” says the report’s co-author Prof Abdul Wahab from the Bangladesh Agricultural University.
“To date, few developing nations have drawn from their own budgets to try this approach of providing people with incentives to encourage conservation, and especially not for fisheries.”
Once abundant in the Bay and hundreds of rivers in Bangladesh, India and Myanmar that feed it, the hilsa fish declined steeply in numbers since the 1970s, largely because of overfishing.
In Bangladesh, hilsa stocks increased after the government made it illegal for anyone to catch them in five important spawning grounds during its breeding season. To compensate fishing households for lost incomes, the government provided 30kg rice per month and promoted alternative livelihoods.
The researchers say the if the scheme proves to be a success, this would suggest that direct payments to encourage sustainable fisheries can work elsewhere.
To improve the scheme, they recommend five ways that include better understanding of the complex socio-economic and ecological systems that underpin the hilsa fishery; and identifying the beneficiaries of the scheme, such as fish exporters, and identify ways these “buyers” of the ecosystem service can help make the scheme financially sustainable. One way to do this would be to channel a portion of export taxes into a conservation trust fund, the report says.
They also suggested identifying how the fishing communities would prefer to receive their compensation packages and redesign them accordingly, empowering local fishing communities to monitor and enforce compliance, and improving regional co-operation between the three countries which make up the Bay of Bengal: Bangladesh, India and Myanmar.
“Sustainable fisheries management is about much more than the numbers of fish in the sea,” says co-author Dr Essam Yassin Mohammed of the IIED.
“Bangladesh’s pioneering model of payments to compensate fishing communities has much to teach other nations that face declines in their fish stocks due to overfishing and environmental change,” he said.