The importance of determining and maintaining migration corridors for the Hilsa Shad fishery in Myanmar Inland Rivers.

The hilsa shad (Tenualosa spp) fisheries are one of the most important commercial fisheries in the Bay of Bengal region, being the national fish of Bangladesh, and playing an essential cultural and economic role in the lives of Myanmar people. More recently, the availability of Hilsa has declined across this region, due to a number of anthropogenic pressures, mainly intensive fishing and river obstruction by dams and barrages. Hilsa are known to be anadromous moving from the sea to the brackish or freshwater to spawn, however very little is very little is known about the lifecycle requirements of Hilsa in Myanmar waters and their migratory routes. River engineering and irrigation infrastructure is increasing in Myanmar rivers, wetlands and estuary systems and this has the potential to significantly negatively impact the Hilsa fisheries in Myanmar. With very little information on the migration patterns of Hilsa in Myanmar, it limits the ability for planning and positioning of infrastructure or remediation works such as fish passage. Leading on from other preliminary World Fish studies, Delta Flows is utilizing otolith microchemistry to determine the movements of adult Hilsa from the sea to the brackish or freshwater, where spawning might occur, and the movements of the juveniles back to the sea. Preliminary catch data has found adult Hilsa hundreds of kilometres inland including young-of-year, so it is suspected that at least a proportion of the population is spawning in freshwater. The next stage is analysis of the otolith microchemistry and this will help to better understand the lifecycle requirements of Hilsa in Myanmar waters, and improve informed decision making in relation to infrastructure planning

SLIDES: Environmental Flow Case Studies: Southern and Eastern Africa

Presenter: Rebecca Tharme, Riverfutures Ltd. 17 slide

SLIDES: Environmental Flow Case Studies: Southern and Eastern Africa

Presenter: Rebecca Tharme, Riverfutures Ltd. 17 slide

Supporting evidence-based decision-making: Capacity Building through Research

Lack of data inhibits informed decision-making and is a critical challenge in developing countries, many of which are under-resourced in financial, technical and institutional capacity to collect and analyse the required data. This limits the countries’ ability to achieve development goals and keeps them dependent on the provision of external resources. Development initiatives often treat capacity building and research as two separate tracks of development. While efforts have been made in the health sector to combine these through project-based learning, this approach is relatively unexplored in the water sector which by its inter-sectoral nature stands to benefit significantly from a more collaborative and solution-oriented development strategy. Capacity Building through Research (CBtR) facilitates data collection and analysis by local researchers, mentored by international experts, strengthening local capacity to produce credible evidence able to inform sustainability-related decision-making. Five case studies piloting CBtR are discussed here and evaluated through criteria of the Dutch Strategy Evaluation Protocol framework. CBtR is shown to be a long-term strategy that requires the strengthening of cross-disciplinary networks to enhance the capacity of water management institutions, which likely contributes to more efficient evidence collection and analysis suitable for decision-makers, leading to greater national resilience and reduced need for external support