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Rice and Fish Trade-off in Resource Management

Ahmadul Hassan
Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS)

Dr. Ainun Nishat
Country Director
IUCN, Dhaka

Mr. Gias Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury
Executive Director
CEGIS

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Nutrient-rich and food rich floodplains also provide nursery and feeding grounds for hatchlings, fry and juveniles. Frequent floods in Bangladesh, cause destruction of lives and properties and hence undertaken mitigation measures like flood control and to protect the crops and ensure increase in production. But, the measures reduce the water extent and duration and destroyed the habitat’s productivity and its condition to support aquatic lives. Hence its is import in resource management to consider the fish and fisheries along with rice production keeping pace with the national goals of attaining food security, maintaining economic growth, sustainable ecosystem, and ensuring social well being. In this paper it developed a computation framework to regulate the water level to reduce management conflict (fish and rice) in the floodplains and tested in Jamalpur area. The study showed the range of water level for each flood cells that could be regulated based on tradeoff between fish and rice production in the floodplain resources management

Keywords: Fish trade-off, Management conflict, Resources management

Location:

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Non-commodity: Performance

Objectives:

Aims of this research study was to promote more efficient use/allocation of land and water for agriculture and fisheries in floodplain water management with flood control measures.

Methodology:

STUDY AREA: The study area is situated in the Northern part of North Central Region (NCR) of Bangladesh and is bounded on all sides by rivers and railroads. On the north east by right bank of Old-Brahmaputra River, on the west by the left bank of Jamuna river and Jamalpur to Sarishabari railway embankment to the south. The area lies within the Brahmaputra – Jamuna flood plain and 80% of study area goes under water during monsoon. The study area has gross area of around 65,000 ha which is spread over different Thanas and total population of the areas is about 631.000 includes 123,000 households (BBS 2000). About 50% of the households in the study area have no agriculture land while some 37% have less than one hectare to sustain their livelihood. The labor force estimated at around 230,000 persons of whom 22% were fully employed while 48% were underemployed round the year. Agriculture daily labor and farming are the dominant labor force. Around 33% of the households were engaged in subsistence fisheries while only 7% Classified as occupational fishing households although most of the latter fish on a part time basis (FAP 3.1, 1993). Based on BBS agriculture historic census data, study suggest a yield reduction function for different flood depth categories for L.T. Aman and Fish from Open water fisheries. This can be modified with the location information. The small fish contain higher protein than big fish and the habitat for small fish preferred in shallow depth of inundation. More local variety of rice grow in deeper flood depth with more protein. FRAMEWORK FOR BALANCE FLOW REGULATION: Balance flow regulation is a regulatory criteria of a fish friendly structure to reduce the conflict management between fish and agriculture in the floodplain within the flood management area. A flow regulatory decision framework had been developed to guide the decision makers through complex problems towards feasible solution (Rijsberman and Koudstaal, 1989). As this conflict management is a spatial problem, hence spatial decision support system (SDSS) concept (Malczewski 1999) was applied. The balance flow in such a way to reduce conflict management had the overall task to contribute to the water resources manger’s goal was to attend the sustainable land and water utilization in the floodplain. To reduce the conflict management four management objectives same had been considered in the framework were (a) Food security, (b) Economic development, (c) Quality of life and (d) Ecosystem sustainability.

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

Article Link (Online Journal):

Funding Source:

1.

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

The developed procedure showed that within the limited resources, the managers could meet the expected target of 7500 metric tons of fish and 62,000 metric tons of rice by regulating water levels only. The study also identified the zone of operation of the tradeoff curve, that is, the zone which needs to be maintained to fulfill the nutrition requirement of people coming from rice and fish. Instead of fixing and/or maintaining a certain water level, a range was proposed which would be suitable for the movement of fish and their food. Such range of water levels could vary from one sub-basin to another and this range should be regulated in such a way that it could meet the nutrition demand of the area. This approach could be applied in the flood protection projects as an operational management tool. This tool may need further improvement based on the experiences to be gained through applications.

Knowledge Management: Report/Proceedings