Conference Paper 01 The CBFM-2 project: proving the case for community based and co-management of fisheries in Bangladesh Dr M.W. Dickson*, Project Leader, CBFM-2 Project *1 Pathfoot Drive, Bridge of Allan, Stirling FK9 4SD, UK. Email: [email protected] 1 ABSTRACT The Community Based Fisheries Management Project, Phase 2 has been implemented by the Department of Fisheries of the Government of Bangladesh with the assistance of the WorldFish Center over the period 2001 to 2007. This paper gives an outline of the main principles behind the project and the activities carried out during its implementation. The project involved a wide range of partners including 11 NGOs who were responsible for the identification and development of 130 community based organisations managing 116 water bodies including closed beels, open beels, rivers and floodplains. The paper summarises the success of the project from different viewpoints. It also discusses some of the situations where community management did not work under CBFM-2 and emphasises the need for further research to build on the start made under this project. INTRODUCTION The Community Based Fisheries Management Project, Phase 2 is closing in March 2007 following an implementation period of 5 years and 7 months. This was the largest and most comprehensive research project ever carried out to assess a range of approaches towards community based management of fisheries resources in inland water bodies. It followed a five year first phase of CBFM where community management was tested in 19 sites. The first phase, supported by the Ford Foundation was able to demonstrate that CBFM approaches can work. The second phase was designed as an action research project to look in more detail at the situations where CBFM approaches should be applied more extensively. It saw an expansion to around 120 sites including lakes (closed beels and open beels), rivers and floodplains. It is important to put this into context – 120 sites sounds like quite a large number but there are an estimated 12,000 government owned water bodies in Bangladesh and a further 4 million hectares of floodplains which could benefit from improved management. WHY COMMUNITY BASED AND CO-MANAGED APPROACHES? According to Robert Pomeroy (Pomeroy and Ahmed, 2006), the potential advantages of co-management include: • A more transparent, accountable and autonomous management system. • A more democratic and participatory system. • More economical than centralized management systems, requiring less to be spent on management administration and enforcement, in the long run. • Through involvement in management, fishers take responsibility for a number of managerial functions. 2 • Makes maximum use of indigenous knowledge and expertise to provide information on the resource base and to complement scientific information for management. • Improved stewardship of aquatic and coastal resources and management. • Management is accountable to local areas. Fishing communities are able to devise and administer management plans and regulatory measures that are more appropriate to local conditions. (Localized solutions to local problems). • By giving the fishers a sense of ownership over the resource, co- management provides a powerful incentive for them to view the resource as a long-term asset rather than to discount its future returns. • Various interests and stakeholders are brought together to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the resources. • Since the community is involved in the formulation and implementation of co-management measures, a higher degree of acceptability, legitimacy and compliance to plans and regulations can be expected. • Community members can enforce standards of behaviour more effectively than bureaucracies can. • Increased communication and understanding among all concerned can minimize social conflict and maintain or improve social cohesion in the community. Implicit in this is that co-management should result in measurable improvements in fisheries – improved yields, more resilient to environmental changes, more sustainable – and this will result in enhanced livelihoods of people involved in exploiting the fisheries. The project not only tested different types of approaches to fisheries management, including fisher managed fisheries, community managed fisheries and women managed fisheries, but was spread across a wide range of very different types of fisheries, some government owned and leased jalmohals (closed and open beels), some government owned but without any leasing arrangement (rivers) and privately owned water bodies such as floodplains. PARTNER NGOS Another layer of complexity was added by encouraging a wide range of partner NGOs to participate in the process of water body identification, community group formation and continued support to community groups through training, mentoring and micro-credit. Each of these brought their own approaches and priorities: • BRAC is the largest NGO in Bangladesh and has been actively involved in fisheries, micro-credit and community management for many years. They were involved in the first phase of the project and in the second phase, tended to concentrate on jalmohal sites that could be managed by groups of fishermen. 3 • CARITAS is an international Christian NGO and was also involved in CBFM-1. They became involved in a mixture of closed beel, open beel and floodplain sites. • Proshika is one of the larger Bangladeshi NGOs and were also involved in CBFM-1. In CBFM-2 they concentrated mainly on riverine sites but were also responsible for some open beel (jalmohal) sites. • CRED is a small NGO that was involved in a single riverine site in the first phase. In the second phase they took on one additional open beel site. • Banchte Shekha is an NGO based in Jessore that concentrates on empowerment of women. They were involved in a single site in the first phase and expanded to 7 other sites in the second phase. Some of the CBFM-2 community groups formed by Banchte Shekha are composed of only women, others were mixed but tended to have greater involvement of women than any of the other CBOs under the project. • The Centre for Natural Resource Studies (CNRS) is based in Bangladesh and has always focused on protection of wetlands rather than activities such as micro-credit. They were not involved in the first phase but were doing similar things in another project. They tended to concentrate on floodplain and river sites, placing emphasis on wider community involvement and linking community groups into clusters. Whereas most of the NGOs organised and registered single CBOs for each water body, CNRS registered multiple CBOs at some of the larger water bodies and also have sites where only one CBO has been formed for a number of water bodies. This makes it essential to distinguish between “water bodies” and “CBOs” when carrying out any analysis. The project also involved two specialist NGOs, the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) who provided legal advice and support through- out the project and FemCom who provided media and folk talent support. As well as these initial partner NGOs, a number of other NGOs became involved with the programme at a later stage. These include SDC which was involved in a single floodplain site, GHARONI which worked with 3 floodplain sites and SHISUK which specialised in floodplain aquaculture and had one site included in CBFM-2. The Department of Fisheries also took direct responsibility for the development of 2 sites. PROJECT ACTIVITIES The first task was to identify water bodies to be taken on by the project. This was carried out through collaboration between the Department of Fisheries, partner NGOs and the WorldFish Center. The next steps were: • Census of households • Hand-over of water bodies from the Ministry of Land to the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock 4 • Registration of CBOs • Training of CBOs • Developing and implementing fisheries management plans including constructing fish sanctuaries, imposing gear bans, enforcing closed seasons and carrying out habitat restoration • Signing MoAs with DoF • Providing micro-credit • Building community centres • Linking CBOs through networking The end result is 130 CBOs actively managing 116 water bodies spread over most of the country. There are approximately 15,000 CBO members directly involved in the project and an estimated 23,000 people who could be classed as direct beneficiaries. The project employed a total of 204 staff. It built 99 community centres. Community groups have constructed 164 sanctuaries in 81 water bodies. Partner NGOs have delivered almost 1000 courses to over 23,000 trainees. DOES CBFM WORK? At the end of all this, the question which is always asked is: “Does CBFM work?” The short answer is: “Yes it does – the project has demonstrated that in most cases community management has improved yields and the sustainability of fisheries and has also enhanced the livelihoods of households participating in management of the fisheries.” Much more detail is given in other papers in these proceedings and in the reports, policy briefs and booklets by the project (Annex 1). To give a more precise answer, one needs to go back a step and determine from whose perspective the question is being asked. This is a situation where different people have very different expectations and indicators of success and in the words of Robert Chambers: “Whose reality counts?” An objective assessment is also prejudiced by the fact that for many people, community based management