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PDF
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Type:
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Conference Paper |
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Author:
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Toufique, Kazi Ali |
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Conference:
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Constituting the Commons: Crafting Sustainable Commons in the New Millennium, the Eighth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property |
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Location:
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Bloomington, IN |
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Conf. Date:
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May 31-June 4 |
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Date:
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2000 |
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URI:
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https://hdl.handle.net/10535/714
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Sector:
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Social Organization
Fisheries |
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Region:
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Middle East & South Asia |
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Subject(s):
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IASC
common pool resources
fisheries
poverty
property rights
privatization
institutions
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Abstract:
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"This paper makes a field level investigation into the relationship between poverty, property rights and livelihoods around some heavily exploited fishing grounds in rural Bangladesh. One of the fishing grounds was forcefully 'privatized' by an influential person. We will show that fisheries resources to which the rural poor have traditionally been enjoying their property rights are increasingly facing threats of capture by powerful actors. This process of privatization possibly increased catch to some extent but this was achieved at a high social cost of threatening the livelihoods of a large number of poor fishers.
"(i) it was the relatively fertile beel that was coercively privatised; (ii) attempts were made to make the privatised beel more productive by converting it to a closed water body by stopping water flows into and out of the beel and by re-stocking it with fish; (iii) a large number of fishers--subsistence as well as commercial--lost their traditionally held rights over the beel; (iv) those displaced from the privatised beel moved to less fertile fishing grounds which possibly resulted in overcrowding; and (v) social power and partisan national level politics played an important role in changing the property rights structure and the beel was finally turned to open access.
"The events around the fishing grounds therefore integrates the relationship between property rights (the institutional change brought about by privatisation change in access rights), livelihoods (small-scale fishing) and poverty in rural Bangladesh. The purpose of this paper is to understand the linkages that define this relationship and to draw conclusions for community based fisheries management in Bangladesh.
"It is argued in the literature that privatisation of fishing grounds increases yield but it hardly seriously questions this proposition or even when this proposition holds true it hardly questions at what cost? We have found that the output gain was minimal but the loss of livelihoods of a large number of poor fishers was colossal. The livelihoods of these displaced people can become unsustainable if these privatisation schemes gather sufficient momentum and alternative livelihoods paths become unavailable or become severely restricted.
"The livelihoods of those involved in small-scale fishing are threatened by poverty and sustainability of the fishing grounds on the one hand and income inequality and access rights on the other. Both these interfaces are therefore self-expanding and forms a vicious circle under increasing demographic pressure and changing property rights. The entire process is also embedded within an integration between village and national level politics. A community based fisheries management policy should be constructed within this social, political and natural resource setup in mind."
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