Fisher engagements with transition in a small-scale inland fishery: long-term structural change, fisher agency, and wellbeing in Parbatipur Sub-district, Bangladesh
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Date
2017
Authors
Rahman, Md. Mahfuzar
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Abstract
Over the last five decades, the inland fisheries sector in Bangladesh has gone through massive and multidimensional structural changes, ranging from infrastructural changes to changes in attitudes, governance, and management. These changes have led to a fundamental transition in the inland fisheries in Bangladesh since the 1990s through the direct intervention of the state: from supply dominated by capture fisheries to supply dominated by aquaculture. The reasons for this transition are diverse, and the effects of this transition are experienced differently by different people and groups according to their economic status, gender, religion, age and political identity. Major effects of these structural changes to fisheries are significant reduction of the length of the fishing period, gradual exclusion of generational Hindu fishers and complete exclusion of women from capture fisheries, significant decline in children’s desire to engage in fishing, and the development of aquaculture at the expense of capture fisheries. These changes have increased agricultural and culture fisheries production and revenue, with two related effects. First, they have stimulated increased capitalist tendencies and inequality among fishers, leading to changes in class structure and deepening dependency on the market. Although most of these structural changes have reduced the total area and number of open water bodies, they have also created many other alternative opportunities for fishers. But, in general, most of the direct benefits of these changes have been captured by the elite. Fishers primarily have benefited from indirect benefits in the form of wage labor and partial involvement in secondary occupations. Fishers creatively responded to these structural changes and have found multiple ways to reduce the shocks, insecurity, and negative impact of these changes, and instead increase income and wellbeing. Major strategies applied by fishers to successfully tackle the adverse impacts of these changes included: diversification of livelihoods and income sources; migration, sharecropping, borrowing, and lending money; and drawing on various forms of social and kin relationships. The primary motivation of this kind of diversification is to reduce risk and uncertainty and to cope with the changing situation. It not only enhances the fishers’ capability to respond to the decline in resources and income, but also enables them to accumulate capital for future investments. The impacts of these structural changes on fishers’ wellbeing present a complex scenario. There is a noteworthy decline identified in their social and relational wellbeing, but simultaneously a notable improvement identified in material and other areas of social wellbeing. There is a remarkable improvement identified in fishers’ overall wellbeing even after the significant decline in capture fisheries, which is surprising.
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Keywords
Small-scale fishery, Social wellbeing, structural change, agrarian transition, property rights