Balancing options for shrimp farming : a landscape approach to investigate the future of shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta

Balancing options for shrimp farming A landscape approach to investigate the future of shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta Olivier Joffre While providing an option for development in coastal areas, shrimp farming is usually associated with high environmental cost due to the loss of mangrove forest and high social cost as farmers suffer heavy financial losses due to disease outbreaks. Planning shrimp farming requires to integrate risk as well as social and environmental cost. This thesis, using the Mekong Delta as a case, presents an approach to investigate, with local stakeholders, options to plan a resilient and sustainable shrimp farming sector. First, Olivier Joffre analyzed the different shrimp production systems from economic point of view before analyzing farmer’s strategies and providing insights on drivers that will push or, at the opposite, constraint farmers to choose integrated mangrove shrimp systems. This knowledge was integrated in an Agent Based Model (ABM) that was calibrated using Role Playing Games (RPG). The effect of future scenarios and different policies on the farmers’ decisions was tested using a combination of RPG and ABM. For one coastal district of the Mekong Delta, the results showed that promotion of intensification of shrimp production has a high social cost and decreases the total production in the study area after 10 years. Policies for supporting the spread of integrated mangrove-shrimp systems, such as Payment for Ecosystem Services, or access to an organic value chain, are not strong enough to influence farmers’ decision toward adopting these systems. Without any adaptation to climate change a sharp decrease of the production is expected. The approach brought local farmers’ knowledge to the attention of decision makers

Typology of shrimp farming in Bac Lieu Province, Mekong Delta, using multivariate statistics

This study aims to update the typology of shrimp farms in a province of the Mekong Delta's coastal area. We analyzed technical and economic characteristics of 170 farms using factor and cluster analysis on the different variables collected during the survey. This allowed us to characterize four different shrimp production systems: intensive commercial and intensive family farms, and the more extensive brackish water polyculture and rice–shrimp farms. The systems differed in their level of intensification, diversification and origin of labor. Labor efficiency was higher in intensive than in extensive farms. The difference in technical practice affected the farm economy and specifically its operational monetary cost which was 25–45 times higher in intensive commercial farms than in brackish water polyculture and rice–shrimp farms, respectively. The intensive commercial farms were significantly less affected by virus outbreak than the extensive brackish water polyculture farms. This last shrimp production system presented a very low shrimp yield but a higher capital use efficiency than intensive commercial farms. Rice–shrimp farms, which are located in a specific agro-ecological environment, presented average sustainability characteristics and an average disease occurrence. Results show that technological investments can reduce the vulnerability to disease outbreak and thus reduce the risk usually associated with shrimp farming

What drives the adoption of integrated shrimp mangrove aquaculture in Vietnam?

The development of shrimp farming in Vietnam has eroded the social-ecological resilience of the coastal ecosystem. Recent literature supports the idea that integrated mangrove-shrimp production systems can contribute to rebuilding this resilience in the Mekong Delta. Two experts panels, international and Vietnamese, were consulted to validate and weight drivers identified from literature that enable or constraint farmers to shift from extensive production system to integrated mangrove-shrimp system or to continue such integrated system. Though a combination of drivers is needed to enhance changes, two sets of drivers were given the highest weight. Experts considered the ecosystem function of the mangrove an enabling driver pushing farmers to plant mangrove in order to improve the pond's water quality and limit disease outbreaks. They perceived the drivers related to the current regulatory framework as constraining because these limit the financial return associated with integrated mangrove-shrimp systems. The analysis indicates that the adoption of these integrated systems requires more equitable distribution of benefits from shrimp and timber production between farmers and other stakeholder in these value chains. We recommend to develop a regulatory framework that can optimize the financial benefits of the integrated mangrove-shrimp production systems for farmers

Combining participatory approaches and an agent-based model for better planning shrimp aquaculture

In the Mekong Delta coastal zone, decision makers must weigh trade-offs between sustaining the shrimp sector and thus ensuring economic development, while also promoting sustainable, environmentally friendly practices and planning for climate change adaptation. This study investigates future scenarios for development of shrimp aquaculture using a spatially explicit, agent-based model (ABM) simulating farmers' production system choices. A role playing game (RPG) with farmers was used to calibrate and validate the model. Four scenarios, representing different visions of aquaculture in the next 15 years, were elaborated with decision makers before discussing the different outputs of the model. Iterative consultation with farmers helped to fine-tune the model and identify key parameters and drivers in farmers' decision-making. The recursive process allowed us to construct a model that validly represents reality. Participants stated that use of the RPG improved their insight for planning. Results of the scenarios indicate that (i) intensification of production is unsustainable, (ii) market-based incentives are too limited to stimulate development of an integrated mangrove–shrimp production system and (iii) climate change will cause rapid decline of production in the absence of adaptation measures. RPG appeared to be a valuable method for formalizing local farmers' knowledge and integrating it into the planning approaches used by decision makers. The ABM, thus, can also be considered a medium or communication tool facilitating knowledge-sharing between farmers and decision makers