Community Based Fisheries Management in Bangladesh
Haster Beel
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Haster beel is located in the north-western part of Bangladesh. It spreads over two districts, Joypurhat and Naogaon. It is a floodplain. The project started with ten villages, though only two now remain. The implementing NGO is BRAC. The FFP is being implemented here since 2001 with sanctuary and stocking type interventions. Stocking was done in 2001 and 2002. No stocking was done in 2003. While the fish from the first stocking was washed away by a flash flood, the harvest from the second stocking is not yet completed although a year is almost gone.
The PWB is complex resource system, so is the nature of property rights over it. At the heart of it lie two ponds in some khas land. The ponds retain water all year round end exist as a separate entity even in the peak of the wet season. There is some khas land surrounding the pond where seine fishing is possible. Stocking was done only in the ponds. The rest of the water body gets seasonal water and access to it is free. Property rights over this part of the PWB were left untouched. The professional fishers are concentrated in the two project villages. One of them plays an active role (Hastabosontopur) while the other passive (Bonogram). The fishers of Hastabosontopur always enjoyed rights of access to the deeper part of the PWB. These rights were lost for three years to another village and regained through the FFP. This to the fishers of Hastabosontopur is a big achievement. Bonogram fishers were fishing in the PWB when Hastabosontopur fishers temporarily lost their rights. After the FFP Bonogram fishers were marginalized. As a consequence we have case studies of fishers who reported to have improved their well being (Hastabosontopur) while others said they could not (Bonogram).
Funds were raised from the fishers of the participating village. The NGO indirectly lent funds to the FMC in the form of credit to women of the project villages. The president of the FMC is a large fish trader and the cashier is a major supplier of fingerlings to the FFP. Since harvest from the second stocking was not complete we could not gather much information on the production impact of the second stocking. Fishers were hired on a catch-sharing basis for a few days far harvesting from the stocked ponds. It appears that the fishers who had the opportunity to fish from the ponds did not get much benefit. However, they benefited from fishing rights over the land around the ponds - but again not to a large extent. The fishers who contributed to the project enjoyed these rights. Thus the main benefit of the project is not clear. As far as fishing in the deeper parts of the PWB is concerned, catch was reallocated from fishers from Bonogram to the fishers from Hastabosontopur. The net benefit generated by the project is not therefore clear. We also observed that actual stocking density was abnormally high because only the ponds were stocked while allocation was made on the basis of the entire area of the PWB. We also observed that the FFP paid four times more for the fingerlings than what was paid by the FMC. Lease value also dropped by a quarter in 2003. The FMC now is almost bankrupt.
Our findings suggest that the benefits of the FFP were going more to the fishers from a reallocation of access rights rather than from improved catch from stocking. Since net benefits generated by the project appear to be negligible, only a group of fishers benefited at the cost of other fishers. The non-fishers possibly captured the bits and pieces of the funds that were flowing from the centre to the project institutions.