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IV. ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS: CONFLICTS AND
"EXTERNALITIES" This section looks at several actual and
potential conflicts between commercial shrimp producers and other social actors.
Aquaculture relies on the natural environment for land, water, feed and seed, as do
capture fisheries and agriculture. The expansion of shrimp aquaculture inevitably
generates competition with other users of these same resources, including peasant farmers,
artisans, fishermen, local élites, local traders, conservationists, urban consumers, the
tourist industry and some state agencies. Many of these conflicts result from direct
competition in the use of land, trees, water and labour among the users of mangroves and
other coastal resources. These users of coastal habitats include local farmers, livestock
holders, woodcutters, fuelwood gatherers and fisherfolk, and many others.
A major portion of the conflicts arising from the expansion of shrimp
farming are the result of environmental and social degradation that is not included in the
costs of shrimp production. Where the industry assumes no responsibility for damages to
other groups arising from its activities, economists call them "externalities".
For example, abandoned ponds are usually virtually unusable for other purposes for
indefinite periods without costly rehabilitation, which is seldom undertaken. Mangrove
destruction, flooding of crops, salinization or pollution of land and water associated
with the expansion of shrimp farming all affect the local people depending on these
resources.
The key question is who is bearing the costs and who is enjoying the
benefits? The social and environmental costs of the expanding shrimp industry are closely
inter-related. We discuss these relationships under two headings:
Natural resource and ecosystem degradation — The shrimp
industry is polluting and degrading water, forests and soils. Public health, biodiversity,
and the sustainable productivity of ecosystems are endangered.
Deterioration of local livelihoods — Shrimp aquaculture is
changing customary patterns of natural resource use by appropriating these resources for
its own purposes while abrogating or restricting rights of local users. This in turn
affects livelihoods more widely by disrupting earlier systems of production, distribution
and social relations.
These two themes provide a convenient way to organize the discussion of
environmental and social impacts. In reality, however, this distinction between natural
resource degradation and the deterioration of local livelihoods does not correspond to the
way local people experience the impacts of shrimp aquaculture. For instance, biodiversity
loss is both an effect of change in resource use and of pollution. Food insecurity for
many local groups is induced by their decreased access to land, water and forest resources
as well as by diminished productivity of polluted environments. Those who are negatively
affected voice their concerns about these impacts as a whole — that is, as they
experience them in their daily lives. This paper is concerned with the way local people´s
livelihoods are being affected by shrimp farming. The reports of local people's experience
in this section, therefore, inevitably blur the distinction between impacts primarily
caused by ecological degradation and those resulting from social disruption.
Natural Resource Degradation: Pollution,
Biodiversity Loss And Health Hazards
Water pollution
Shrimp aquaculture both causes water pollution and is affected by it.
Estuarine waters are the recipients of urban, industrial, agricultural and aquaculture
pollution. Shrimp aquaculturists consider their crop failures to be mainly due to organic
and inorganic pollution coming from other sources. Waste and sewage from urban and
industrial centres and from modern agriculture frequently pollute shrimp ponds with heavy
metals, pesticides and other toxic products.[27]
In areas densely covered with intensive shrimp farms, however, the
industry is responsible for considerable self-pollution and particularly for
bacteriological and viral contamination. Each hectare of pond produces tons of undigested
feed and faecal wastes for every crop cycle. These ponds discharge ammonia, nitrites and
nitrates. The latter is fatal to fish when it binds with the haemoglobin of their blood
(Ibrahim, 1995). Nitrates induce the growth of phytoplancton, protozoa, fungus, bacteria
and viruses, such as the Vibrio group growing in shrimp faeces which is in large part
responsible for the 1988 collapse of production in Taiwan Province of China (Lin, 1989).
The overuse of fertilizers and of veterinary and sanitary products such as antibiotics
adds to the water pollution problem. It also contributes to the decreasing resistance to
disease of the shrimp stock. Where intensive shrimp farms are densely spaced, waste laden
water tends to slosh from one pond to another before it is finally discharged into the
sea. Shrimp producers are extremely concerned about assured supplies of clean water as it
is vital for their immediate economic returns.
The large amounts of sedimentation in intensive shrimp ponds are posing
serious disposal problems. From 100 to 500 tons of sediment per hectare per year are
apparently accumulating.[28] Ponds are cleaned after
each crop cycle and the sediments are often discarded in waterways leading into the sea,
or they are sometimes used to build dikes. Their putrefaction inside and outside the ponds
causes foul odours, hypernutrification and eutrophisation[29],
siltation and turbidity of water courses and estuaries, with detrimental implications for
other water users as well as for the local fauna and flora.
Salinization of fresh-water sources and of soils is a common problem
associated with shrimp farming. Pumping fresh-water from ground water aquifers into the
ponds often lowers the water table which in turn causes sea-water to flow inland into
fresh-water sources. The pollution of agricultural land is also caused by salinization
from sea-water that has been pumped in and is often flushed out within terrestrial
environments. The implications of salinization and falling ground water tables on
surrounding populations and overall biomass productivity, as well as biological diversity
are among the worrisome impacts of shrimp aquaculture. In the district of Ranot, in
Thailand, which is densely covered in many areas with intensive shrimp farms, an average
of 33 cubic metres of fresh-water per day is pumped in for each metric ton of shrimp
produced. The area's average ground water level decreased from 3 metres below the surface
in 1989 to 7 metres below the surface in 1991 (NACA, 1994b:46). Where high densities of
shrimp farms were installed in Taiwan Province of China and the Philippines, sinking water
tables have been reported to cause sinking land levels: coastal land in an area of Taiwan
Province of China sank by some three metres, causing rice fields to become lakes and
buildings to collapse (Chiang, Liu and Kuo, undated).
Biodiversity losses
The impacts of shrimp aquaculture on biodiversity (the totality of genes,
species and ecosystems in a region), are multiple. Shrimp aquaculture affects biodiversity
for many reasons already mentioned. Shrimp ponds cover vast coastal land areas and they
pollute large volumes of water. Modified water circulation systems are altering wild fish
and crustacean habitats. The risks of disease spreading out of the ponds into wild stocks
are increasing. Pollution from shrimp farms contributes to the increasing frequency of
"red tides" and endangers other native fauna and flora.
The negative impacts of released raised shrimp on the genetic diversity
and resilience of indigenous shrimp are mostly unknown, but are believed by some
specialists to be considerable (Pullin, 1992; Ibrahim, 1995). Genetic engineering is
apparently becoming increasingly important in shrimp farming. It is used to produce
disease resistant stocks, to develop vaccines or other veterinary drugs and to elaborate
artificial feeds. These new feed formulas may allow faster and better assimilation and may
contain less expensive protein than fish meal.
In addition to the very visible and possibly irreversible degradation of
coastal ecosystems, shrimp aquaculture may have unforeseen indirect impacts on
biodiversity. For example, with the clearing and levelling of coastal areas, such as those
of Bangladesh, ecosystems and populations are becoming more vulnerable to flooding and
tropical storms. The sedimentation of estuaries negatively affects coral reefs and
remaining mangroves, and their roles as nursery beds for numerous fish species.
Health hazards
Health hazards to local populations living near or working in shrimp farms
have been observed in several places. For instance, in Tamil Nadu (Quaid-e-Milleth
district near Pondicherry) an approximately 1,500 acre shrimp farm has been reported to
have caused eight deaths from previously unknown diseases within a period of two months
following the installation of the aquaculture farm (Naganathan et al., 1995:607). There
are numerous hazards to public health along the shrimp production chain, from the farmers
through the various processors to the often distant consumers. The workers employed on
shrimp farms handle several potentially dangerous chemicals, and may be exposed to
unsanitary working conditions.
The literature makes several references to the lack of regulation and
registration of drugs in aquaculture. The shrimp industry sees its own interest in having
standards on "permitted levels of residue" in cultured seafood similar to those
in poultry and livestock. Some aquaculturists also advocate a system of penalties to
discourage the use of harmful chemicals (NACA, 1994b:III-25). According to an ICLARM
report, the consumption of aquaculture products from places such as Manila Bay in the
Philippines, the Deep Bay of Hong Kong and part of the Inner Golf in Thailand "undoubtedly
exposes the consumers to high levels of contaminants especially micro-organisms"
(Pullin, 1993:315). Health risks for aquaculture consumers are associated with both
chemical and biological contaminants. Concerns have been expressed about exposure to
mercury, cadmium, organo-chlorinated pesticides, dioxins and antibiotics (Barg, 1992:32,
table 11). For crustaceans such as shrimp which need clean water to grow, risks of
biological contamination are more likely to occur during the processing stage.
Infestations with salmonella, or human pathogens such as Vibrio parahameolyticus, are
greatest during peeling, gut removal and cleaning the shrimp before they are frozen
(Pullin, 1993:315).
Pollution and other types of natural resource degradation induced by
shrimp farming were mentioned earlier in this report. The literature reviewed provided
considerable information and analysis of strictly "environmental" problems
directly affecting the industry. More complex questions concerning, for instance,
biodiversity losses were, however, seldom taken into account by the industry. The related
social implications received even less attention. The following sub-section deals at
greater length with local level social and environmental impacts of shrimp farming. An
attempt is made to consider these issues from the perspective of local people.
Changing Natural Resource Use and
Deteriorating Livelihoods
According to an ICLARM report: "Aquaculture development and
innovations and indeed intervention of any kind in the agrarian system of developing
countries must not cause economic shifts or changes in access to resources" (Pullin,
1993). Intensive shrimp production hardly seems to meet these standards. Social and
environmental changes resulting from expanding shrimp aquaculture in coastal areas are due
in large part to the conversion into shrimp farms of land, water and forests formerly
dedicated to other uses. Shrimp farms often expand at the expense of agriculture,
aquaculture, forests and fisheries that are better suited in many places for meeting local
food and employment requirements.
In monetary terms, shrimp farming is the most profitable enterprise in
Asian aquaculture. For many countries it is an important source of export earnings. For
instance, in Bangladesh shrimp exports in 1993 brought in more foreign exchange, after
rice, than any other agricultural export. In India, from 1992-1993, shrimp exports
accounted for 67 per cent of the value of all foreign exchange earnings from seafood,
although they were only 36 per cent in terms of quantity (Erkman, 1994). But who benefits
and who pays the costs of those foreign exchange earnings?
The nature, severity and extent of the social impacts of shrimp farming
differ widely from one place to another. Intra-communal social categories of users are
differentiated by characteristics such as class, caste, occupation, ethnicity, age and
gender. Each group may experience divergent impacts. Local ecosystems and the types of
land uses which are being displaced, as well as the local and national socio-economic
contexts, all influence their impact on local populations (Peterson, 1982). In areas
already converted to the production of export crops, where the land is controlled by large
landowners — such as the sugar barons of the island of Negros in the Philippines, for
example — the introduction of shrimp farming implied that many landless workers who
had lost their jobs with the collapse of sugar production in the mid-1980s could find
employment opportunities and income from shrimp production. Most of the profits, however,
went to the big landowners. On the other hand, if land is owned by small peasant farmers
and if they live in a state which respects their land rights, benefits may be more widely
diffused. In some cases, at least a few small peasants may become considerably better off
by becoming sub-contractors to big shrimp producers or joining producer co-operatives.
Where the land is legally owned by the state, as is usually the case of
mangroves, the distribution of benefits and costs primarily depends on state policies.
These in turn are largely shaped by the political influence of different social groups
such as peasants, local élites, outside investors and environmentalists, in national and
local power structures. The pace, level and strategy of national and sub-national economic
"development" can be a crucial variable in the assessment of social impacts of
shrimp aquaculture. In Malaysia, for example, the Land Acquisition Act was amended in 1991
to allow state governments to acquire land not only for "public utility"
purposes (hospitals, schools, roads, etc.), but "for any purpose beneficial to the
economic development of Malaysia" (Murray, 1995). This implies, according to this
article, that the state governments can acquire land for private development projects. The
loss of paddy lands, or of access to coastal fisheries, as a result of shrimp pond
construction may be less devastating for many poor peasants in the labour-scarce and
rapidly growing Malaysian economy than in the labour surplus slow-growing one of
Bangladesh. In wealthier and fast-growing economies, finding alternative livelihoods for
displaced peasants is generally more feasible than in less industrialized and lower income
ones. For some members of the communities affected, however, access to alternative
livelihoods may be slim. In particular, people with less social mobility, such as older
women who have lost access to land, may suffer severely.
Shrimp aquaculture is expanding in many areas that in the past had been
managed under some kind of common property régime. This is particularly the case in
coastal zones where fisherfolk require easy access to beaches and where multiple uses by
different users of land, water and forest resources have made exclusive control by
individuals untenable. Several case studies mention that due to the expansion of modern
shrimp ponds in coastal areas, local fishermen can only reach the beach by trespassing at
great risk on shrimp farms or by taking a long detour. Local people have not only lost
access to their fishing grounds and to their sources of riverine seafood and seaweed, but
they have also relinquished social and recreational activities that they traditionally
enjoyed on their beaches. Moreover, coastal lowlands and mudflats are used during the
rainy season by many coastal communities for the extensive farming of fish and crustaceans
— practices which have traditionally been regulated through customary common property
régimes. Since the latter have frequently had no formal legal status, the customary
holders of areas appropriated for shrimp farms have been easily dispossessed, usually
without compensation.
With these caveats in mind, let us look at a few cases where modern shrimp
farming has had some rather serious negative consequences for many people as well as for
their environment. We attempt here to cite cases that bring out several of the
contradictions associated with divergent social and economic contexts.
Mangrove deforestation
Mangrove forests constitute an important component of coastal ecosystems
in tropical regions of both hemispheres. They thrive in tidal estuaries, salt marshes and
muddy coastlines. Mangroves are dominated by trees and shrubs of the Rhizophor genus. Some
species have the peculiar faculty of rooting from the seed still attached to the tree.
Mangroves were regarded as being practically worthless by colonial settlers and urban
dwellers, but coastal indigenous populations had been using them sustainably for many
centuries as sources of firewood, construction materials, nurserybeds for fish and
crustaceans and as protection against storms and floods. During recent decades mangroves
have been disappearing rapidly, victims of urbanization, commercial logging, unrestricted
fuelwood collection, charcoal making, river impoundment and, more recently, shrimp pond
construction.
The ecological role of mangroves is now widely recognized and many
tropical countries have adopted legislation designed to protect them. These rules,
however, are often inoperative in practice. For instance, Malaysia constituted a National
Mangrove Committee which specifically prohibited the clearing of mangroves for the
installation of shrimp farms, but the practice is still continuing (FAO/NACA, 1994c). This
implementation difficulty is in part due to the fact that riverine and coastal ecosystems,
such as mangroves, have customarily been used under common property régimes serving
multiple uses and users. The privatization of this kind of land will inevitably harm
customary users who have few means to defend their rights. Their customary rights have
never been formalized and the benefits they gain do not enter either private commercial or
national economic accounts, as they are principally from self-provisioning. Users of these
ecosystems are often marginalized (Bailey, 1988:37; Skladany, 1992).
Mangrove destruction has been accelerated by commercial shrimp farming.
The early phase of the industry's expansion depended upon extensive shrimp farms using
large areas located in intertidal zones. From available data, it seems that in countries
where shrimp aquaculture has become important, 20-50 per cent of recent mangrove
destruction has been a result of clearance for shrimp ponds (Ong, 1982; NACA, 1994a;
Sultana, 1994; Rabanal, 1976; CAMP, 1990; Quarto, 1995b). Considerable mangrove
destruction has also occurred in countries which have not been developing shrimp
aquaculture, such as in several coastal regions of East Africa (Bailey, 1989; Barraclough
and Ghimire, 1995).
The construction of dikes and canals causes erosion and increased
sedimentation. The World Bank has recently claimed that its major project of shrimp
aquaculture in India will undertake reforestation of mangroves to replace those destroyed
by ponds installed throughout the 13 project sites dispersed over Andra Pradesh, Orissa
and West Bengal (FAO/NACA, 1994b:85-90). Mangrove reforestation, however, faces many
technical and economic obstacles. Moreover, customary users of destroyed mangroves usually
do not have access and management rights over the newly afforested areas. In any case,
former users who are prejudiced in shrimp farm areas will not benefit from afforestation
projects undertaken elsewhere. Furthermore, afforestation projects in other areas
frequently imply that still other customary users of natural resources will be deprived of
their rights.
Mangroves are well adapted for traditional extensive shrimp farming, but
high construction costs and acid sulphate soils make them less attractive for
semi-intensive and intensive shrimp ponds (Barg, 1992). Conversion of mangroves to shrimp
farms significantly reduces the natural propagation of wild captured shrimp as well as
other fish. Moreover, their protective role for low-lying coastal regions is rapidly
diminished with their replacement by shrimp ponds.
After the mid-1980s with the adoption of more intensive modes of
production, shrimp ponds were also built further inland and fewer mangroves were destroyed
in relation to the industry's spread. By then it was widely acknowledged that replacing
mangroves with shrimp farms was often uneconomic. A study conducted in the Philippines
found that well-managed mangroves may be worth from US$ 1,000 to US$ 10,000 per hectare
for forestry and fishery products per year, excluding other social and ecological
services. In comparison, shrimp culture provided an average of net profit of about US$
11,600 per hectare per year (Primavera, 1994), but for no more than five to ten years.
These estimates suggest that the conversion of mangroves into shrimp ponds in this case
would be undesirable, even on purely economic grounds. Moreover, expanding ponds further
inland often displaced agricultural activities and implied changes in water circulation in
addition to damages from the pumping in of sea-water, salinization and discharge of
wastes. This often degraded the surrounding land as well as the mangroves downstream.
Studies should be undertaken to estimate in a more systematic way the
direct and indirect causes and impacts of the destruction of mangroves associated with the
expansion of the shrimp industry. Measures designed to mitigate damages should take more
account of social implications. Even though there is no authoritative study of mangrove
deforestation in general, and much less of mangrove deforestation due to shrimp farming,
we cite some estimates found in the literature in order to illustrate the importance of
this ongoing process.
In Thailand mangroves were reduced by half during the 1980s, but shrimp
ponds were not the only cause of this deforestation. It is estimated, however, that in
1992 some 34 per cent of the country's shrimp pond area had been in mangroves a decade
earlier (NACA, 1994b:15). In Malaysia from 20 to 25 per cent of the mangrove area in the
Peninsula has been earmarked for aquaculture use (Ong, 1982). In the Philippines between
50 and 60 per cent of mangrove denudation is attributed to fish and prawn culture
(FAO/NACA, 1994d:section 5.1.3.2; Pollnac, 1992:17). In the early 1990s the Sundarbans,
which constitute the biggest remaining mangrove area in the world, covered about 1.2
million hectares in India and Bangladesh. At that time, mangroves had already shrunk to
half the area they occupied at the turn of the century. In the West Bengal (India) part of
the Sundarbans, about 35,000 hectares of mainly extensive shrimp ponds have replaced
mangroves (FAO/NACA, 1994b:26). In Bangladesh, in Rampur and the Charandeep block of the
Sundarbans area, the Department of Forests estimates that 9,250 hectares of mangroves have
been destroyed to make way for shrimp ponds (Sultana, 1994:14).
Coastal dwellers used these mangroves for collecting fodder, fuel, and
medicinal plants, and for fishing and hunting. According to women from the Jaladas
community in the Polder 17/2 in Bangladesh[30],
Our misery started since the clearance of mangrove forest. In the past the
mangrove forest provided us with life, not only we lost our income from the forest, our
work load and drudgery in our life also increased (...) If we went to the mangrove forest
for a day to collect forest products we could live on that for three or four days
(Sultana, 1994:12).
The women of Polder 17/2 now walk seven to eight kilometres collecting cow
dung for fuel from grazing fields. Women now also need to earn cash incomes to buy the
products they formerly collected themselves:
Our economic condition has deteriorated significantly since we lost income
from the mangrove forest products and resources; the prices for housing materials, dyes
for fish net, floor mat are very high; before we used to collect them from the mangrove
forest, now we have to buy them from the market; vegetables, wild fruits, medicine all
need to be bought now; hunting of wild animals and birds are not possible anymore
(Sultana, 1994:12).
Even those working on the shrimp farms in the Chokoria Sunderban said that
their income would not compensate for the income they lost from the mangrove. Farmers in
the Polder 17/2 claim that they had no chance to escape the shrimp business since the
choice was either opting for "joint cultivation" or leasing the land to
outsiders (Sultana, 1994:1).
Mangroves also protected coastal villages from flooding, cyclones and
tidal waves. In 1991, after the installation of shrimp ponds, a tidal wave in the same
Chokoria part of the Sundarbans took thousands of lives. A similar tidal wave in 1960 did
not harm anybody from the villages as they were still protected by the mangroves (Sultana,
1994:14).
Encroachment upon agricultural land
To what extent are shrimp farms replacing and damaging local food
production systems? Or is shrimp aquaculture merely replacing one cash crop by another
more lucrative one? Are shrimp farms competing with surrounding farmers' needs, salinizing
their land, using and polluting their irrigation and drinking water, or is it offering
them better ways to earn a livelihood? Much of the coastal land in Asia recently converted
into shrimp farms was previously used for food crops and farm animals. A study in
Thailand's Inner Gulf area, for example, suggested that about half the area used for
shrimp ponds had been producing rice (paddy), another one fourth had been in coconut
plantations and the remainder in mangroves or salt flats (NACA, 1994b:49).
The increasing need for land by shrimp entrepreneurs has meant a dramatic
rise in land prices in many areas. A study in India notes that after the installation of
shrimp farms near a village, land prices rose by 20 per cent. Local farmers could no
longer afford to purchase land, while indebted farmers were tempted to sell their holdings
(Mukul, 1994:3076). In the Ranot district of Thailand, land prices rose by about 80 per
cent between 1987 and 1993 (Aquastar Laboratories Ltd., 1994:7-8). In another area of
Thailand, Pak Phanang, land prices went up from the equivalent of US$ 50 - 75 per hectare
in 1985 to US$ 50,000 - 75,000 per hectare in 1991 (Boromthanarat, 1994). In Negros (the
Philippines), thousands of hectares in sugar plantations were converted in the mid-1980s
into prawn farming. Conversion slowed down in 1989 when Japan, the main importer,
decreased temporarily its demand for shrimp (Ofreno, 1993).[31]
When extensive shrimp farming is combined with paddy cultivation, it
should not always be viewed as a multicropping pattern advantageously replacing the fallow
period of a seasonal monocrop production. In Bangladesh, for instance, the land previously
used for the production of rice and paddy during the wet season was often used in the dry
season for pasture and cultivation of beans, melons, pumpkins, jute and other less
water-demanding crops (Sultana, 1994:11). According to this case study, the average number
of cows and buffalo per household prior to shrimp farming was 11, but afterwards it
dropped to 3. Sharecropping becomes less interesting when the land is under water for
several months. Indeed, sharecroppers receive land for the cultivation of rice paddy for
shorter periods than before in order to leave more time for shrimp growth. Rice yields are
falling with the increasing salinity of the land (de Campos Guimarães, 1989). After the
farming of shrimp, the harvests of paddy and local rice varieties average only one to two
thirds of yields recorded prior to shrimp cultivation.
This same case study of Bangladesh shows that women and children have been
most adversely affected by the conversion of mangrove and agricultural land into shrimp
ponds. The income controlled by women and their possibilities for self-provisioning
decreased after the introduction of shrimp farming. In the Polder 17/2 area they had less
access to fodder and grazing land, and were forbidden to let ducks and poultry run near
ponds for fear they would feed on the shrimp. In addition, their home gardens were flooded
in the dry season during which they used to grow vegetables. To cope with those changes,
women from Chokoria Sunderban often engaged in daily wage labour, in drying fish or making
nets and mats they would sell after long journeys to markets, leaving children back home
and risking robbery and harassment on the way. When the men did the marketing, however,
the women tended to lose control over the income from their work. Furthermore, men often
lost their previous jobs because of decreased harvests of fish and timber (with the
depletion of mangroves and degraded ecosystems) and because of their reduced access to the
coast. Shrinking agricultural areas and decreased soil fertility further reduced labour
and income opportunities. Men increasingly migrated to seek employment in cities, or
working on fish trawlers for big fishermen, leaving women and children alone for long
periods. Even the few farmers who leased their land for shrimp farming, or who stayed on
their land under some joint cultivation contract, say that their income was less than what
it was prior to the shrimp business (Sultana, 1994).
Polluted waters
As seen earlier, shrimp farms use both sea- and fresh-water to replenish
their ponds. This heavy demand on water brings shrimp enterprises into competition with
other users of these water resources. In areas where commercial shrimp ponds have been
constructed there is frequently insufficient fresh-water left to meet customary needs for
irrigation, drinking, washing, or other household and livestock related uses, and water
supplies may be contaminated. Ground water salinization has been reported in several
places. This often means that people — most of the time women — have to bring
water from more distant wells. In a village in Tamil Nadu (Nagai-Quaid-e-Millet district,
Pompuhar region), after the expansion of shrimp farms on about 10,000 hectares, women have
to walk two to three kilometres to fetch drinking water that previously was available
nearby (Bhagat, 1994). In the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh, a case study conducted
by Vandana Shiva reports that there was no drinking water available for the 600 fisherfolk
of the village of Kurru due to aquaculture farms salinizing ground water. She adds that
"after protest from the local women, drinking water was supplied in tankers"
(Mukul, 1994).
Depleted fisheries
Local stocks of native fish and crustaceans are being depleted in many
places because of the removal of mangroves which served as nurserybeds, and also as a
result of indiscriminate overfishing of wild shrimp fry (over 90 per cent of randomly
caught fry are often wasted (Biksham Gujja, WWF, Gland, Switzerland, personal
communication, 1994). Natural fisheries are also frequently damaged by pollution caused by
overloads of nutrients, sediments and chemicals from shrimp farms. In an Indian coastal
village, Ramachandrapuram, fishermen reported that the value of their average catch of
shrimp used to be Rs 50,000 per catamaran per month, but after one year of operation of
nearby aquafarms their catch was ten times smaller (Mukul, 1994). In the Chokoria part of
the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, fishermen have reported an 80 per cent drop in fish capture
since the destruction of the mangroves and building of dikes for shrimp farming (Sultana,
1994). Frequently, fisherfolk protest because their traditional access to the coast has
been restricted or because stocks of wild crustaceans and fish have disappeared.
As was mentioned earlier, the expansion of shrimp farming frequently
crowds out public and private investments in other types of aquaculture (both coastal and
inland) that are less profitable financially, but that have been or would be much more
effective in meeting local needs for food and employment (Bailey and Skladany, 1991; FAO,
1995). Opposition by local people to shrimp farm expansion, however, is usually triggered
by immediate threats to their livelihoods, and seldom reflects lost opportunities to use
financial and natural resources for other non-customary purposes.
Impediments to other land uses
Commercial shrimp farmers tend to invest where possible in pristine
coastal areas where there is little pollution and where land is cheap. This often puts
them in conflict with the rapidly expanding tourist industry. Tourism, like shrimp
farming, brings in large amounts of foreign exchange. It attracts substantial investments
and is profitable for transnational investors and national and local élites, just as the
shrimp industry is. As a result, tourism interests are much more likely to be taken into
account in environmental impact assessments of proposed shrimp farming projects than are
the interests of peasants and fisherfolk.
The growing populations of coastal areas in tropical countries are in
constant need of additional space for housing and facilities. Low-income residents of
coastal villages depend mostly on communal and state lands to meet their requirements for
additional space. In Sri Lanka it was reported that over 80 per cent of all shrimp farms
were located on state owned lands and that this caused many conflicts with villagers
attempting to expand into the same areas (FAO/NACA, 1994e:26-27).
Social Disruption and Disempowerment
Weigel called the shrimp industry's expansion in Thailand
"aquacultural colonization" (Weigel, 1993). By this he meant the
commercialization of land and labour. Traditional production and exchange systems were
disrupted and power relations radically changed in many places affected by commercial
aquaculture. The local markets providing labour and bringing fish protein to inland areas
were displaced by distribution channels going to high-income urban consumers (Skladany,
1992:35). Export-oriented aquaculture such as shrimp farming is associated with the
"Green Revolution" kinds of technologies, resource uses and related social and
environmental impacts. The "Blue Revolution" is using large quantities of
commercial inputs for producing a single crop, while it neglects the livelihood needs of
local people and their environmental requirements (Bailey and Skladany, 1991; Mukul, 1994;
Shiva, 1994).
Some analysts question whether private property régimes are the most
suitable ones for the sustainable management of aquatic resources, including coastal
aquaculture. Jomo, on the basis of his study on the crisis of fisheries in Malaysia, says:
the very success of capitalist development in fishing has
undermined the very sustainability of the fishery resources, and hence the fishery
products. (...) Because of the common property nature of fisheries (...) unbridled
competition cannot lead to economically optimal investment (Jomo, 1991).
Most commercial shrimp farms are private properties, but many of the water
and other resources they use or affect have the same common property attributes as those
of ocean fisheries.
The introduction of new shrimp farm technologies has proceeded with no
concern about local knowledge, practices, preferences and resource use. The control of
local resources has shifted from communities to external institutions. Weigel shows how in
Thailand an environmental discourse has been adopted by large shrimp corporations to
advance their own ends. They claim that intensive farms save mangroves and that their
sophisticated capital intensive technology reduces environmental damage. The production of
technology to manage environmental risks affecting shrimp yields is in fact a lucrative
and growing business which is mainly located in higher income countries. In other words,
the extensive shrimp farmers, not the large corporate intensive producers, are alleged to
be the cause of shrimp farming's negative environmental impacts. Much of the literature
cited earlier, however, shows that this distinction does not hold. In our opinion, these
issues could be investigated empirically rather easily through several well-selected and
well-designed case studies.
The literature suggests that national governments have somewhat different
positions concerning the expansion of shrimp farms from one country to another. Within the
same country different government agencies often have contradictory policies. These range
from active promotion of shrimp farming to laissez faire, and from strict control
(at least on paper) to hands off. Governments in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and
Bangladesh have been promoting expansion of the shrimp industry by facilitating the
acquisition of land and credit, by offering tax favours and import-export privileges.
In India, several states are attempting to formulate new legislation to
guide and control aquaculture development and in particular shrimp farming. Indian shrimp
farms have been developed mostly on privately owned lands, and have received relatively
little formal and financial support from the national government (ICICI & SCICI Ltd.,
1994). Land rights, however, are primarily regulated by the governments of individual
states. Several Indian state governments are actively promoting both foreign and domestic
investments in shrimp farms. Some states allow leased land to be mortgaged, while others
do not. Differences in state policies are one of the principal reasons why aquaculture
spread more rapidly in Andra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu than in many other coastal states.
Where conflicts arise with local groups previously using shrimp farm
resources, government agencies tend to support the commercial aquaculturists. In Malaysia,
India and Bangladesh, however, courts at the national level have sometimes backed local
people's organizations in legal appeals claiming their rights had been violated by shrimp
aquaculture development. But when a governmental institution backs local people in their
opposition to shrimp pond development that would damage their livelihoods, their case is
still not won. Projects that are temporarily blocked are frequently resumed again with the
backing of local élites or of some other state agency. Local people usually receive no
compensation for lost resources and livelihoods.
Local farmers in Malaysia succeeded in having the High Court declare as
void the land acquisition procedure of Kerdha state for the development of a big tiger
prawn project. The Land Acquisition Act provides the state with the authority to acquire
land for any public purpose, and for any purpose which "in the opinion of the state
is beneficial to the economic development of Malaysia or to the public or any class of the
public, and for mining, residential, agricultural, commercial or industrial
purposes". The High Court, however, considered that a US$ 24 million prawn project
— the biggest in the country — did not meet the public purposes and interests
criteria. The majority of the (approximately 100) landowners from whom the land was
acquired did not want to relinquish their land (altogether 207 acres), mainly rice paddy.
The state court, nevertheless, overruled the High Court's orders on the grounds "that
the State government was the rightful owner of the land" (Utusan Konsumer,
1994:7; Fish Farming International, 1994b). In Malaysia the states (not the federal
government) have jurisdiction over land, minerals and water (up to three miles off the
coast) (ICLARM, 1988).
In the Chilka lake region (some 900 square kilometres of water surface in
the Indian state of Orissa), local people with the support of a High Court judgement of
September 1993, managed to stop a large joint venture between TISCO (a Tata branch) and
the state of Orissa. Their victory was short lived. Soon after, local élites managed to
take control of the same land and water to install their own shrimp ponds: "The Tata
ouster has brought in its wake a greater evil in the form of local dadas who flout
all norms with impunity" (Kar, 1994).
In some cases local élites are able to take over the shrimp business
themselves, while in others their interests are subordinated to those of outsiders. In her
Sundarbans case study of Bangladesh, Sultana illustrates this latter version of changes in
power relationships associated with the introduction of commercial shrimp farms:
the traditional power structure has been destabilised and it is now
controlled by the outside shrimp producers. The new power elites with their urban
background, economic strength and connections with the bureaucracy and the administration
are able to have absolute control over the local elite and people (Sultana, 1994:15).
This helps explain why local élites sometimes oppose shrimp projects
sponsored by outsiders — as seems to be the case of Indian groups opposing the World
Bank investment of US$ 80 millions in shrimp farming (about 80 per cent of all Bank
investment in aquaculture in the country) (Erkman, 1994:26).
In most places, high initial investment requirements together with
restricted access to land and water resources limit entry into the shrimp industry to the
wealthy. In Bataan (Philippines) prawn cultivation has been controlled by the wealthiest
thirty or forty families (Broad and Cavanagh, 1993). As was seen in section II, a recent
tendency is to construct large-scale integrated shrimp production systems (with on-site
hatcheries and processing plants). This sometimes allows modest farmers to enter the
business under the control of corporations that provide them with credit, inputs and
supervision and that purchase their product. In several countries local farmers are forced
to lease their land to shrimp entrepreneurs. In some cases, farmers become wage labourers
on their own land, often working as guards. Others become landless agricultural labourers
if they can find other employment. These landless workers frequently migrate to urban
centres (Sultana, 1994).
According to several case studies, social cohesion and security frequently
diminish in villages penetrated by commercial shrimp farming. Outside ownership of shrimp
farms, and the perception by villagers that traditional land rights have been violated,
often leads to internal social divisions and theft. Stealing shrimp requires only a few
minutes and can be worth the wages of several days. This explains the presence of armed
guards watching most ponds (de Campos Guimarães, 1989; Centre for Communication and
Development, undated).
Case studies in Bangladesh and India's West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have
found that when outsiders took over extensive traditional shrimp farms they were helped by
the police who threatened angry farmers. Pond guards have been hired from outside to avoid
their complicity with villagers. In order to control theft more effectively, additional
bunds have been built to divide the ponds (de Campos Guimarães, 1989). Living in villages
near shrimp ponds in some cases resembled living in the vicinity of war stricken areas:
Violence and coercion are regular phenomena in the shrimp culture area.
Local people do not have freedom of movement in their own village. Anyone moving after
dusk even in the public road could be accused as thieves and be beaten or to be put on
jail by the shrimp gher owner. Local people are constantly watched by the guards of
the shrimp gheres and harassed by them (Sultana, 1994:15).
Similar observations were made in the case study from West Bengal cited
earlier. The case reported above in India's Chilka Lake area stated:
(...) Matters are now fast coming to a head with villages around the lake
pitted against each other. There are at least three to four villages where armed police
have been deployed to keep a watch over the deteriorating law and order (...) the
allurement of prawn dollars has reduced this once tranquil wetland and the surrounding
villages to a veritable battleground, with guns and bombs being used in bloody clashes.
The losers are invariably the fishermen who are being slowly edged out of the flame by the
Mafia, thanks to an apathetic administration (Kar, 1994).
Previous to the development of commercial shrimp farms in this area, most
local people were fishermen who were able to live from local resources. Now they face
unemployment and even starvation (Kar, 1994).
The village of Tennampattinam in the Nagai-Quai de Millet district of
Tamil Nadu is another example. The houses of 34 landless families were burned down because
their inhabitants opposed installation of a shrimp farm and some of the injured opponents
were not even admitted to the hospital. In Tamil Nadu several popular movements oppose
shrimp farm expansion. For instance, 64 villages of the Nagai-Quai de Millet district are
organizing opposition groups. They are supported by existing movements such as the
Gandhian Gram Swaraj Movement and the Land for Tillers. Hundreds of farmers evicted from
their farms have been threatening to take back their lands from the shrimp corporations in
order to cultivate them again, but they have had to face violent police repression (Mukul,
1994:3076; Naganathan et al., 1995; Quarto, in Das, 1995: 21-29).
The case studies cited above are not mere anecdotes. Enough is provided
about their institutional and policy contexts to allow the analyst to treat them as
"modal types" (in the Weberian sense) that are representative of much more
widespread processes and consequences.
Footnotes
27. Ecuador has lost many tons of shrimp because
of pesticides released from banana plantations ("Tauro Syndrome") causing the
shutting down of 12,000 hectares of ponds in the Gulf of Guayaquil (Khor, 1995:20).
28. Since some 10 tons of feed are used to
produce about 5 tons of shrimp per hectare per year, this raises questions about where
such incredible quantities of sediment come from (Rosenberry, 1994a:42).
29. See footnote 2.
30. See footnote 13.
31. These problems are not limited to Asia. In
Ecuador, conversion of mangroves and cropland into shrimp ponds began even earlier. Since
the mid-1970s, large landowners have received support from the state and international aid
agencies. USAID provided loans for over $ 6.5 millions between 1987 and 1990 for
development of seven large shrimp farms (Stanley, 1990). |
