Contextualising fisheries policy in the Lower Mekong Basin

Development policies for fishery resources within the Mekong River Basin are increasingly divided between aquaculture and capture fisheries. The modern production orientation of aquaculture has been adopted by government and NGOs and justified by the rhetoric of poverty alleviation and rural development. In contrast, capture fisheries has been subjugated as an activity that reaffirms the dependency of the rural poor on natural resources. This paper critically analyses the division between aquaculture and capture fisheries in Cambodia, Thailand and Lao PDR by tracing the emergence and influence of `development narratives¿ used to justify contemporary policy and practice

Certify sustainable retailers?

Third-party eco-certification has received considerable attention by academics and practitioners alike as a new mode of sustainability governance. But there is growing evidence that certification faces a number of limits when applied to producers in developing countries, in particular the weak capabilities of small-holder producers to comply with the standards set out by these certification schemes. When these producers make up between 70% and 80% of the estimated 117 million fish farmers worldwide (Bondad-Reantaso & Subasinghe, 2013; Valderrma, Hishamunda, & Zhou, 2010), we can question how certification can meet its own goals of transforming industries towards sustainability. This chapter extends current debates over the capability of producers to comply with standards by arguing for an alternative certification arrangement. Instead of continuing with the current model of certification that places the ‘burden of proof’ for sustainability on producers, I propose a new form of retail-targeted certification that reverses this burden of proof. Under such a model, it is not small-holders who have to demonstrate sustainability, but instead the buyers and retailers who receive a disproportionate benefit from the marketing and trade of their fish. A retailer certification scheme would reverse this burden of proof by giving recognition and market reward to retailers adopting ‘developmental’ forms of value-chain coordination that foster inclusive and effective support for improving the production practices of small-holders. Such a model might be relevant for any globally traded commodity sector involving small-holder producers in need of (but unable to independently make) improvements towards sustainability

Wetlands governance in the Mekong Region: country reports on the legal-institutional framework and economic valuation of aquatic resources

Wetlands are central to the livelihoods of rural communities through out the Mekong Region, providing vital functions and services that support the rural economy, ensure food security for the most vulnerable membrs of society, and underpin the prospects for national development. Proper appreciation of the importance of wetlands has been hampered by inadequate information and awareness of their uses, particularly among development planners, as well as legal and institutional frameworks that are often fragmented and poorly enforced. Wetlands are consistently undervalued and overlooked as a result, and ultimately, it is the rural poor who lose out.Wetlands-Economic aspects, Wetlands-Law and legislation, Socioeconomic aspects, Aquatic resources, WorldFish Center Contrib. No. 1754, Mekong Delta, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Lao PDR,

Denktank tegen overbevissing tonijn

Twee van de drie belangrijke soorten tonijn in de Stille Zuidzee nemen snel in aantallen af. Een bijeenkomst van bedrijven en het Wereld Natuur Fonds, op initiatief van Wageningen University en met medefinanciering van EL&I, legde de kiem voor een nieuw type beheer en een groot onderzoeksproject

Acceptance and suitability of renewable energy technologies in Lao PDR

Based on the findings of the various studies completed under the Asia Pro Eco (APE) project, this paper reviews the social acceptability of PV Solar and biomass in the context of the Lao PDR. The analysis is guided by two key questions: What are the constraints and barriers to successful extension of RE to rural areas? What improvements can should be made to RE policy and extension services, meeting the needs of local social and environmental drivers for change

Making social sense of aquaculture transitions

Resilience deals explicitly with change and provides a middle ground between the social and the environmental sciences. However, a growing critique by social scientists questions the ability of resilience thinking to adequately examine the social dimensions of change. The question that emerges is how social scientists should engage with resilience. We addressed this question by comparing resilience with agrarian change and transitions theory, through the backdrop of the fastest growing global food sector, aquaculture. Our analysis showed that each theoretical perspective provides fundamentally different insights into social and environmental transition inherent in the aquaculture sector. Although resilience thinking is best suited to assessing the ecological aspects of production, its systems ontology limits the inclusion of dynamic social relations or innovation. In contrast, agrarian transition enables a more meaningful understanding of how social relations are reconfigured as agrarian society shifts toward more capitalist modes of production, and transitions theory provides insights into social process of innovation. Given the epistemological differences between these theoretical approaches, we argue against attempts that reify systemic thinking by naturalizing social theories and concepts into resilience thinking. Instead, we argue that social theories such as agrarian change and transition theory should be seen as complimentary and that integration should focus on bridging results and insights. Doing so enables a more robust assessment of the social aspects of social-ecological transitions in the aquaculture sector and beyond

Vertically Differentiating Environmental Standards: The Case of the Marine Stewardship Council

This paper explores the externally-led vertical differentiation of third-party certification standards using the case of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). We analyze this process in two dimensions. First, fisheries employ strategies to capture further market value from fishing practices that go beyond their initial conditions for certification and seek additional recognition for these activities through co-labelling with, amongst others, international NGOs. Second, fisheries not yet able to meet the requirements of MSC standards are being enrolled in NGO and private sector sponsored Fisheries Improvement Projects (FIPs), providing an alternative route to global markets. In both cases the credibility and authority of the MSC is challenged by new coalitions of market actors opening up new strategies for capturing market value and/or improving the conditions of international market access. Through the lens of global value chains, the results offer new insights on how such standards not only influence trade and markets, but are also starting to change their internal governance in response to threats to their credibility by actors and modes of coordination in global value chains

Governing in a placeless environment: Sustainability and fish aggregating devices

Sustainability governance views ‘place’ as either a central concept and phenomenon to counter homogenising globalisation, or as an irrelevant concept for understanding ostensibly ‘placeless’ global environments such as oceans. Based on a review of global tuna fisheries in placeless oceans, we illustrate the importance of place in governing the sustainable use of fish aggregating devices (FADs); floating objects under which tuna and other fish aggregate, enabling efficient purse seine fishing practices. These FADs are places that connect global tuna flows with national and global capital, information and regulatory networks. We argue that addressing sustainability challenges in purse seine tuna fisheries means governing FADs as places, by recognising and altering the networked relations that structure global flows of capital, information, regulation, and trade. We do this by bringing in ‘place’ to our analysis, thereby providing a new perspective on the governance of marine sustainability and an alternative to the homogenising regional or global governance regimes. In doing so we also challenge habitually localised, sense-making and sedentarist connotations of place-based sustainability governance, and instead call for greater theorisation of globally networked places in otherwise placeless environments

Scenarios for Resilient Shrimp Aquaculture in Tropical Coastal Areas

We contend there are currently two competing scenarios for the sustainable development of shrimp aquaculture in coastal areas of Southeast Asia. First, a landscape approach, where farming techniques for small-scale producers are integrated into intertidal areas in a way that the ecological functions of mangroves are maintained and shrimp farming diseases are controlled. Second, a closed system approach, where problems of disease and effluent are eliminated in closed recirculation ponds behind the intertidal zone controlled by industrial-scale producers. We use these scenarios as two ends of a spectrum of possible interactions at a range of scales between the ecological, social, and political dynamics that underlie the threat to the resilience of mangrove forested coastal ecosystems. We discuss how the analytical concepts of resilience, uncertainty, risk, and the organizing heuristic of scale can assist us to understand decision making over shrimp production, and in doing so, explore their use in the empirical research areas of coastal ecology, shrimp health management and epidemiology, livelihoods, and governance in response to the two scenarios. Our conclusion focuses on a series of questions that map out a new interdisciplinary research agenda for sustainable shrimp aquaculture in coastal area