Striking a balance between carrots and sticks for fisheries management: lessons from Bangladesh

Fisheries provide millions of people with a source of livelihood. Yet across the world, these resources are fast diminishing because of pollution, habitat destruction, overfishing, natural disasters, and climate changes.... [ view full abstract ]

Fisheries provide millions of people with a source of livelihood. Yet across the world, these resources are fast diminishing because of pollution, habitat destruction, overfishing, natural disasters, and climate changes. Traditional approaches to halt this decline focus on regulating against destructive practices, but to little effect. A more effective strategy could be to establish a direct economic incentive mechanism such as payments or compensation schemes, or to incorporate such payments into existing regulatory mechanisms. Examples from terrestrial environments, and a few from aquatic environments, suggest that economic incentive-based mechanisms can work to protect both livelihoods and environments.

A scheme offering payments for hilsa conservation in Bangladesh offers a rare example of a direct economic incentive mechanism being used for sustainable fisheries management. Hilsa is one of the most important single-species fisheries in the Bay of Bengal. More than half a million people depend on it for their livelihood and 250 million Bengali people depend on it for nutrition. But in the face of over-exploitation—the exploitation rate increased from 0.33 to 0.66 between 1990 and 2002— both scientists and policymakers fear a collapse of the fish stock in the near future. This has led the Bangladeshi government to declare five sites in the fishing grounds as ‘hilsa sanctuaries’, where fishing is banned during the breeding season. To compensate for lost earnings, the government provides ‘affected’ fisher communities, which total 186,000 households, with food and alternative income-generating activities. Despite some challenges such as freeriding, mistargeting, limited capacity to police and enforce the ban period; it is believed that the scheme has had positive impacts both on hilsa population and the livelihoods of thousands of fishers. What makes this initiative unique is the fact that it is funded by the Government of Bangladesh without any external assistance.

In this presentation we will answer the following questions:

1- What does it take to complement regulatory fisheries regimes with economic incentives;
2- How to ensure effective targeting so that the poor do not lose out;
3- Getting the science right; why is it important to understand the complex biophysical and human systems of the fishery.