Competition between users in different resource sectors

10.2.1.Competition for use of the floodplain centres on two main areas of water management: the use of surface water for irrigation of crops in the dry season, and the control of flooding in the monsoon season. Surface water bodies are no longer of interest only to fishers and there is competition for water resources between surface water irrigation and fishing. Where the resource is scarce, as in the dry season, competing demands for water can result in conflict, denial of traditional access rights, diversion of water and control of the resource by powerful and influential sectors of the community (the impact of water abstraction for irrigation during the dry season has been discussed in Section 8).

10.2.2.Bangladesh The Bangladesh government’s intention since 1974 has been to ensure national food security through intensifying wet- rice production (see Dixon 2000, Craig et al 2000). With government and donor bodies subsidising intensification, this has led to heavy investment in new rice technologies (HYVs) and the associated technologies and infrastructure required to support them. Bangladesh has been successful in achieving food grain self sufficiency but this has been at the expense of increasing competition between groups over floodplain land use during certain periods of the year, and over water use during the dry season, and has potentially been at the expense of the fisheries which provide the main source of protein in people’s diets.

10.2.3.Meanwhile the change in cropping pattern associated with agricultural intensification has also impacted the fishery through its effect on the labour market. The traditional, rain-fed cropping pattern provided little labouring work during September-October and January- March; for many the September-October period was a period of particular distress and famine. The shift to irrigated dry season rice cropping has provided an increased demand for labour during December-February (transplanting) and April-June (harvesting and processing), both of which complement the main fishing season. The harvest period for broadcast monsoon season rice is now less important, leading landless labourers to seek fishing opportunities at this time, which is the peak of open-access fisheries, when the flood is receding (FAP 17, 1994b), thereby resulting in increased pressure on the floodplain fishery

and increased competition between full-time fishers and part-time fishers (landless labourers) and those who may be moving into the fishery more permanently (Barr et al xxx).

10.2.4.Who gains and who loses?

Bangladesh Government subsidisation of agricultural intensification has tended to favour those who have access to land. Except for those with tiny plots of land (the near-landless), those with land can be regarded as ‘non-poor’ in terms of Bangladesh national indicators of well-being, (the extent of land-ownership equating closely with wealth-status. While government subsidies have now been discontinued, agricultural intensification now has a momentum of its own which better-off landowners will naturally be unwilling to compromise. Meanwhile the poor, while deriving employment benefit from agriculture and associated service industries, are increasingly dependent for part of the year (the wet season) on other livelihood strategies for food security and economic survival. One of these livelihood strategies is fishing (Barr 2000, Dixon 2000).

10.2.5.Given the shifts in cropping patterns and associated seasonal labour regimes, it is not surprising that there are reports of conflict between land-based producers, whose goal is to increase the area of flood-free cropland, and those whose production systems are primarily or partially based on aquatic resources. Fishers and boatmen the groups are the groups most commonly affected by the negative impacts of FCD/I schemes. In the FAP12 studies, all FCD/I schemes except submersible embankment types were found to have reduced access to subsistence fishing in open water bodies, yet the numbers of landless people entering them were found to have increased by at least 50% over the past few years. These schemes also affected the livelihoods of f/t fishers so that many were seeking other forms of work, at least on a part-time basis, while up to half had withdrawn from full-time professional fishing entirely. The studies did recognise, however, that this impact was partially mitigated by a modest increase in agricultural labouring opportunities (FAP 12, 1992).

10.2.6.The majority of those who make a living on the floodplains depend on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial production. Nevertheless, since the landless poor are normally dependent on aquatic resources for at least part of the year, they need to have access to these at that time. However, being poor (and perhaps Hindu) full- and part-time fishers normally lack the political and social capital to stand up to the dominant land-owning (Muslim) majority. Thus, there is the threat of the loss of access to CPRs by the poor as more powerful rent-seeking groups appropriate them for their own use.

10.2.7.In Bangladesh, agricultural land is held under private title (while it is above the flood), but when it is submerged to a depth of more than knee-height it becomes a CPR in which (if it is not leased as a jalmahol) anyone can fish. Additionally, even on shallow-flooded land that remains private property but where the owner is not utilising the aquatic resources, poor people can harvest these resources. However, as the value of the fisheries rises, land-owners often use various devices (Katha, brush piles) to concentrate fish on their land for harvesting when the flood-waters recede, or may fence off areas in what is customarily a CPR. In both instances they deny access to others – and frequently back this with force.

10.2.8.Such constraints on access to CPRs (a de facto ‘privatisation’ of the resource) may be flouted by individual subsistence fishers, or may be more actively resisted by fisher groups and even whole communities (see Dixon 2000). However, given the value of the resource, the low entry costs to their exploitation, and uncertainties over access rights, there is considerable potential for conflict between different groups of fishers, between groups from different social social and occupational strata, and particularly between groups with different perspectives on land and water use on the floodplains. As Craig et al (2000) note, FCD/I projects in which the benefits of flood control have accrued mainly to those farming inside embankment schemes have been responsible for exacerbating social tensions between different groups, and particularly between farmers and fishers over the timing of sluice gate opening to allow fish and fry into the floodplain (FAP 12, 1992).

10.2.9.Meanwhile doubt has been thrown on the the overall economic value of FCD/I schemes. For example Islam (2000), using an economic optimisation model, has examined the trade- off between agriculture and fishing at different levels of flood control in the Bangshi- Dhaleswari-Kaliganga (BDK) scheme in north-central Bangladesh. Islam calculated that whilst medium and high levels of flood control embankment improved agricultural returns, all levels of embankment decreased returns from fisheries. Furthermore, when the operation and maintenance costs of FCD/I infrastructure were included, the net returns from the floodplain was greatest with no flood control infrastructure in place. Islam concluded that, although the model was highly sensitive to the price of fish, structural changes to the floodplain aimed at achieving agricultural growth may be somewhat misdirected in their failure to fully value the floodplain fisheries (Craig et al 2000).