{"id":99660,"date":"2022-12-22T13:01:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T07:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/?post_type=samudra&p=99660"},"modified":"2022-12-22T13:01:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T07:31:28","slug":"the-price-for-ilish","status":"publish","type":"samudra","link":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/samudra\/the-price-for-ilish\/","title":{"rendered":"The Price for Ilish"},"content":{"rendered":"
Conservation of fisheries in Bangladesh has become heavy-handed and militarized while poverty in fishing communities remains unmitigated<\/strong><\/p>\n This article is by Md Kutub Uddin<\/strong><\/em> (uddinkutubmd@gmail.com), director of Sagar Seba, and the Bangladesh and Communications Coordinator for the ICCA Consortium<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Early on the night of March 16, 2021, police opened fire on a small fishing boat and killed a young fisher named Mohammad Masud in the Meghna River. The shots were fired in the river north of Chandpur, the town famous for its well-known trading centre of ilish (hilsa), Bangladesh\u2019s most prized fish. It was reported that Masud, 24, went fishing with some others during a seasonal ban imposed by the government to protect juvenile fish. The police said they opened fire in self-defence after the fishers threw brick chips and attacked the police with sticks. When a journalist visited the deceased Masud\u2019s house, his family did not have even a \u201chandful of rice\u201d to feed themselves.<\/p>\n Official estimates tell us that the catch in mixed-species open-water fisheries in Bangladesh has been increasing throughout the last decade. The catch is rising in the ilish fishery also; this is the single largest fishery in volume and economic value. Still, fishing families like Masud\u2019s are either ultra-poor or poor in the official categorization of poverty. Fishers go hungry during fishing ban seasons. Armed police, the coast guard, and navy patrol the fishing grounds to enforce the ban. In recent years, the air force has also conducted aerial surveillance. During such a season in 2020, at least 5,533 fishers were jailed. How did conservation in Bangladesh become so heavy-handed and militarized despite the poverty in fishing communities?<\/p>\n An old tale<\/strong><\/p>\n The history of systematic injustice, economic and environmental, towards peasants and fishers dates back to the British colonial takeover in Bengal. The East India Company established its new land administration and revenue regime by the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793. It transferred all lands and water bodies, including rivers and inshore waters, as estates to a newly created small group of landlords called zamindars.<\/p>\n The history of systematic injustice, economic and environmental, towards peasants and fishers dates back to the British colonial takeover in Bengal<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The empire is long gone. Yet successive governments have failed in making significant efforts to address distributive and procedural injustice against traditional artisanal fishers. There have been no legal reforms to recognize their customary tenure. The government does not invest meaningfully in artisanal fishing communities to enable them to secure a fair share of the income from fisheries.<\/p>\n For decades, capture fisheries were shrinking due to a wide range of pressures. Reduced water flow in trans-boundary rivers due to dams, barrages and diversion of water upstream significantly impacted the aquatic ecosystems in Bangladesh. Industrial and agricultural runoffs have polluted the water. Aquatic habitats are reduced and degraded by changes in land use\u2014intensive farming, flood control measures, water infrastructure, draining wetlands for agriculture or land development, and encroachment, to name some. Water engineering, including embankments, has especially impacted fish biodiversity, population and the unit value of the catch.<\/p>\n No efforts have been made to restore and conserve fish habitats; or to mitigate or prevent the impacts of external threats. Rather, the government has prioritized aquaculture, in the wake of shrinking capture fisheries. Wealthy landowners in the rural areas have profited from large-scale intensive aquaculture, often responsible for degrading aquatic biodiversity in the country.<\/p>\n Misplaced priorities<\/strong><\/p>\n In the late 1990s, Bangladesh experienced a decline in the total estimated catch in capture fisheries. Even then, the government did not address these factors on priority in its fisheries management plans. For instance, the Hilsa Fisheries Management Action Plan (HFMAP) in 2003 was mostly used to establish no-take zones and seasonal bans.<\/p>\n Most of the factors behind the endemic poverty of fishers in Bangladesh can be traced back to the absence of distributive and procedural justice<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The management plan started with a target to protect jatka (juvenile ilish under 23 cm in size). Several top-down interventions have been gradually put in place since 2003 to increase the ilish catch. These interventions include spatial and temporal restrictions on fishing; limitations on the use of fishing gear and the size of the ilish catch; regulations for fishing vessels; and the distribution of food rations among a limited number of fishers during the fishing ban season.<\/p>\n Under the HFMAP, the most notable temporal interventions for the conservation of ilish are two seasonal bans on fishing: One to protect the jatka and another to protect the brood ilish (mature and about-to-spawn). To protect the brood, there is a 22-day-long ban on catching, carrying, transporting, offering, selling, exporting or possessing ilish fishes in the country. This period is evenly divided before and after the first full moon of the Bengali month of Aswin (usually in October). The second ban, to protect jatka, is for seven months every year, from November 1 to May 31. During this time, catching, carrying, and selling of jatka is prohibited.<\/p>\n The government does not adequately compensate fishers during the fishing ban seasons, though since 2004, the authorities have distributed a limited amount of rice as ration through the Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF) programme. Using a heavy hand, the government forces fishers to comply with these regulations. For instance, from 2011 to 2013, the mobile courts reportedly imposed 2,462 prison sentences and fines amounting to US $106,509 on law-breaking fishers. The mobile courts are, in fact, non-judicial \u2018summary courts\u2019 run by \u2018executive magistrates\u2019 embedded with law-enforcing agencies.<\/p>\n Fishers be damned<\/strong><\/p>\n Several no-take sanctuaries for ilish run along the Ganga and Meghna river systems, as also in Bangladesh\u2019s coastal waters. There are two declared marine protected areas (MPAs) in offshore waters to protect megafauna species of conservation interest. Planning and designation of these riverine and MPAs did not adequately consider social outcomes. Consequently, these protected areas are underperforming in \u201ceffectiveness and social equity\u201d, according to recent studies. Most of the factors behind the endemic poverty of fishers in Bangladesh can be traced back to the absence of distributive and procedural justice. Yet, from the beginning of state interventions to govern and manage open-water fisheries, the erratic efforts were hardly participatory. More than two decades later, it has morphed into heavy-handed, top-down, enforcement-based and increasingly militarized conservation.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n