Dr Md Saifuddin Shah, a researcher and retired Professor of Khulna University, has taken a close look at development of fisheries sub-sector arguing that 'the role of fish in food, nutrition, economy, employment and socio-cultural heritage of the nation is, in a word, enormous. The contribution of fisheries to the national GDP (gross domestic product) is about 4.0 per cent and that to the agricultural GDP is roughly one-fourths and in the export sector, more than 2.0 per cent". The ramifications of fish cultivation spill over a wide range of areas and this writer has drawn upon the paper heavily, at times paraphrased. It says that 60 per cent of animal protein supply in the diet of our people comes from fish; about one-tenths of the total population of the country are dependent on this sector for their livelihoods and of these people, a large part is women. The production of fish in the country is increasing every year. During the last decade, the annual rate of increase of production was registered at 6.0 per cent; in 2014-2015 fiscal year, the total fish production stood at about 4.0 million metric tons.
The role of fisheries education in producing technical manpower for research, extension and management in public and private sectors has been remarkable in recent decades. The first-ever formal fisheries education was instituted in the then East Pakistan Agricultural University, Mymensingh and technical fishery graduates started coming out since after liberation of Bangladesh. Fishery is now an expanding form of education; degree-level fisheries education is being offered in 12 out of the 35 public universities of the country and about 700 graduates are coming out each year in the country to take up fishery and allied positions in different public and private sectors. The fisheries research organisation, the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute, was established in 1984 and now for the last two decades or so, discipline-wise adaptive researches are being carried out in various stations and sub-stations of the institute in different parts of the country. Quite a number of adaptive technologies on aquaculture, on fisheries management in open waters of rivers, lakes, beels, haors and baors and on fish handling and post-harvest processing have been brought out from the institute.
Development of the fisheries sector of Bangladesh during last two decades or so has been mainly 'donor-driven' and impetus has particularly been given to improvement and expansion of aquaculture sector with allocation of around 60 per cent of the funding over the period from 1986 to 2005. At about the same time, a number of innovative programmes were taken up in the country to develop and protect water bodies, increase fish production, facilitate access of the poor to the fishery enterprises, develop fish marketing channel, support private sector, fish seed multiplication, involve local communities to manage water bodies in a way that optimises production, protects the poor fishers' interests, and diversify water uses in an environment-friendly manner.
Professor Saifuddin Shah then showed how open water fisheries got a setback in the wake of rice dish getting richer through advent of embankments and craze for growing modern rice. The area of open water and closed water in Bangladesh is estimated to be about 4.0 million and 0.7 million ha respectively. The contribution of open water production to the total production used to be 70-75 per cent during 1970s. The decrease of the share of capture production from such vast waters of beels, haors, baors, lakes, flood plains, coastal flat lands and other traditional waters like khals and canals is alarming. Open water fishery has got to do with management and conservation and looking into the existing dwindling nature of open water capture fisheries. Common property right of aquatic resources, population pressure-linked over-exploitation and lack of biological management are seen to be the principal reasons why open water production dwindled over the years. The multifaceted inter-sectoral conflicts in open water fisheries management must be seriously looked into. Of all the sectors with which the open water capture fishery has the most direct and damaging conflict is agriculture.
Embanking major rivers for flood protection for increased rice production has thwarted the usual lateral and longitudinal breeding and nursery ground migration of the riverine species for many years; the floodplain fisheries recruitment from rivers have been seriously damaged by lack of fish pass and/or lack of judicious management of the existing sluice gates on the mouth of rivers/khals having connection with the floodplains. Other conflicts are water use for irrigation for winter cropping, use of insecticides/pesticides in crop fields, construction of roads, bridges, culverts, thereby blocking the passage of local migration of fishes. The abundance and biodiversity of open water species have been drastically reduced and without having been able to protect open water fishery biodiversity which is considered to be repository of gene pool of the cultured stocks, aquaculture biology and production cannot be sustained in the long run.
The writer is a former Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
