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Virtual Water Footprint in the Shrimp Industry of Bangladesh

Md. SALEQUZZAMAN
Professor
Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University, Bangladesh and Research Fellow, Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy (ISTP), Murdoch University, Australia

Asif IQBAL
Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University, Bangladesh

Anushila MAZUMDER
Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University, Bangladesh

Md. Ahasan RAKIB

Md. Nazrul ISLAM
Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University, Bangladesh

Md. Nazim UDDIN
Assistant Professor
Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University, Bangladesh

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Water, especially the fresh water is a scarce resource and an essential element for the living beings including humans around the world. Presently millions of people around the world face fresh water shortages due to scarcity and misuse of fresh water. This shortage poses a serious and growing threat to sustainable development of the developing country like Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, shrimp industry (both marine water shrimp and fresh water prawn) is the second largest export sector after ready made garments. Enormous amount of water is used for the production processes (for example hatchery management and seed production, aquaculture and grow out pond management, feed production, and processing plants) of this industry. In this research, the total fresh water requirement (as virtual water form) was calculated for the production of marketable export product from the Bangladesh’s giant fresh water prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii and tiger shrimp, Penaeus monodon respectively. While the industry brings a significant amount of foreign currency through exporting the products, the process includes huge amount of virtual water export that does not includes in the monetary process in favor of farmers or Bangladesh Government. The research calculated that Bangladesh exports 4206.805 metric tons of fresh water prawn and 25046 metric tons of tiger shrimp respectively, where around 488 Gm3 virtual water for the production of fresh water prawn products and around 382.88 Gm3 virtual water for the production of tiger shrimp products have been exported without the value of any price through exportation in the Fiscal Year 2004-05 from the south-western region. Most of this production is come from the traditional and extensive systems which could possible be saved by using the improved technology. The research concludes prawn and shrimp are the major exporting goods of the country but it does not cover any costs of virtual water trade yet. Therefore the research suggests for inclusion virtual water footprint as a toll or other cost in the shrimp industry as a policy guideline for the sustainable shrimp and associated industries of Bangladesh.

Keywords: Shrimp industry, Virtual food print, Sustainability, Bangladesh.

Location:

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Non-commodity: Performance

Objectives:

This study is meant to assess the volume of water needed to have a one Kilogram of processed prawn, in order to have concrete figures for creating awareness more research is required from planner, scientist and researcher. Although this product brings a lot of foreign currency in our country, it also transfer huge amount of water not in real sense but in virtual sense. But a little attention has been given to this fact and no research has been done for the efficient use of this water.

Methodology:

Methods for the calculation of virtual water footprint of tiger shrimp/giant prawn Virtual water footprint of per capita processed tiger shrimp was calculated by using the following equation which was formulated based on the concept of “virtual water footprint” developed by Allan in the early 1990s (Allan, 1993, 1994) .
VWFS [processed, p.c] = [(VWCPL15 ×Pf(N)) + NWU] ×Pf(P) + PWU + DWU + PrWU
VWFS [processed, p.c] denotes the virtual water footprint of per capita processed shrimp.
Where;
VWCPL15 = Virtual water content of per capita PL15
NWU = Water used in the nursery for per capita shrimp nursing
PWU = Water used in the growout pond to produce per capita shrimp
DWU = water equivalent to ice used in the depot for per capita shrimp
PrWU = Water used to process per capita shrimp
Pf denotes the “product fraction” which was introduced to simplify calculation of virtual water footprint of per capita processed prawn based on the concept proposed by Chapagain and Hoekstra (2003a). Here Pf(N) and Pf(P) denotes the product fraction of nursery and pond phase respectively.
The product fraction (Pf) can be calculated as follows:
Pf = No. of Individual/survibility
Hatchery
Virtual water content of post larvae was calculated on the basis of field survey, 2005 data on the total water used in the hatchery by the post larvae yield.
VWCPL15 = HWU/PLy
VWCPL15 denotes the virtual water content of PL15, HWU the total water used in the hatchery and
PLy the post larvae yield.
Yielding of post larvae was calculated depending on the stocking rate of larvae and their
survivality:
PLy = LS × S
PLy denotes the yielding of post larvae, Ls and S are the stoking rate of larvae and survivality of larvae and post larvae.
HWU denotes the water used in the hatchery which was calculated by summing up the water used in the spawning tank (WUST), water used to transfer larvae from spawning tank to larvae collection tank (WUtr (1)), water used in the larvae collection tank (WULCT), to transfer larvae into larvae rearing tank (WUtr (2)), water used in the larvae rearing tank (WULRT), and maturation tank
(WUMT):
HWU = WUST + WUtr (1) + WULCT + WULRT + WUtr (2) + WUMT
The WUST WULRT andWUMT were calculated as follows:
WUST = b1 + b2 + b3 + b4

In which:
WUST = water used in the spawning tank [liter];
b1 = water required to transport broodstock from field to hatchery [liter/mother];
b2 = water volume of the spawning tank [liter];
b3 = amount of water changed in the spawning tank [];
b4 = virtual water added through feed [liter];
Amount of water changed, b3 follows from multiplying the water change rate with the number of
days:
b3 = water change rate × number of days
b4 was calculated by multiplying the virtual water content of feed with the total feed used;
b4 = fbl × VWbl
VWbl denotes the virtual water content of beef liver which was used as food and fbl the total
amount of beef liver used which follows from multiplying the feeding rate with the number of
days:
fr = feeding rate × number of days
Water used in the larvae rearing tank (WULRT) and maturation tank (WUMT) were calculated by summing up the volume of water of that tank (V), total amount of water was changed during the culture period of that respective tank (WC) and the amount of virtual water added through food that is used in that particular tank (fVW)
WU [LRT or MT] = V [LRT or MT] + WC [LRT or MT] + fVW
In which:
WU [LRT or MT] = total water used in the larvae rearing tank (LRT) or maturation tank (MT)
[liter/post-larvae];
V [LRT or MT] = volume of water of the larvae rearing tank (LRT) or the maturation tank
(MT) [liter];
WC [LRT or MT] = amount of water changed in the larvae rearing tank or maturation tank
during the culture period [liter];
fVW = total amount of virtual water added due to feeding the post-larvae of thet particular
tank [liter];
Amount of water changed in the larvae rearing tank and maturation tank, WC [LRT or MT] were calculated by multiplying the water change rate with the number of days:
WC [LRT or MT] = water change rate × number of days.

Source of Information: International Conference on Water & Flood Management (ICWFM-2007), 12 - 14 March 2007, BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Article Link (Online Journal):

Funding Source:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

Virtual water is a hidden resource of Bangladesh that always excluded to calculate from the exportable items from Bangladesh. Shrimp and prawn are the important industries in Bangladesh. All of the products of exportable items of shrimp and prawn industries have the significant hidden cost for virtual water, commonly known as ‘Virtual Water Footprint’ that always neglected from the calculation of gross domestic products (GDP) of Bangladesh as a tax or any tool or environmental cost. Therefore the cost of virtual water footprint of shrimp and prawn industries should be calculated during its export or any kinds of Business.

Knowledge Management: Report/Proceedings