IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/natres/v28y2004i2p91-101.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rice versus fish revisited: On the integrated management of floodplain resources in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Bhavani Shankar
  • Ashley Halls
  • Julian Barr

Abstract

Disproportionately little attention has been paid to the dry season trade‐off between rice and (inland capture) fish production on the floodplains of Bangladesh, compared to the same trade‐off during the flood season. As the rural economy grows increasingly dominated by dry‐season irrigated rice production, and floodplain land and water come under ever‐increasing pressure during the dry winter months, there is an urgent need to focus attention on these dry months that are so critical to the survival and propagation of the floodplain resident fish, and to the poor people that depend on these fish for their livelihood. This article examines three important dry‐season natural resource constraints to floodplain livelihoods in Bangladesh, and finds a common factor at the heart of all three: rice cultivation on lands at low and very low elevations. The article articulates the system interlinkages that bind these constraints and the long‐run trend towards irrigated rice cropping on lower‐lying lands, and suggests a management approach based on locally tailored strategies to arrest this trend. Apart from its direct relevance to the floodplains of Bangladesh, which support more than 100 million people, these lessons have relevance for river floodplain systems elsewhere in the developing world, notably the Mekong Delta.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhavani Shankar & Ashley Halls & Julian Barr, 2004. "Rice versus fish revisited: On the integrated management of floodplain resources in Bangladesh," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(2), pages 91-101, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:natres:v:28:y:2004:i:2:p:91-101
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-8947.2004.00076.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-8947.2004.00076.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1477-8947.2004.00076.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alam, Md. Ferdous & Thomson, Kenneth J., 2001. "Current constraints and future possibilities for Bangladesh fisheries," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 297-313, June.
    2. Sultana, Parvi & Thompson, Pau, 2003. "Methods of consensus building for community based fisheries management in Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta," CAPRi working papers 30, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. M. S. Iftekhar, 2006. "Conservation and management of the Bangladesh coastal ecosystem: Overview of an integrated approach," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 30(3), pages 230-237, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dasgupta,Susmita & Huq,Mainul & Mustafa,Md. Golam & Sobhan,Md Istiak & Wheeler,David R., 2016. "Impact of climate change and aquatic salinization on fish habitats and poor communities in southwest coastal Bangladesh and Bangladesh Sundarbans," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7593, The World Bank.
    2. Rawat, Nidhi & Babu, M S Umesh & Nautiyal, Sunil, 2016. "Climate change and sea level rise: A review of studies on low lying and Island countries," Working Papers 359, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    3. Hossain, Istiaque & Alam, Md. Mahmudul & Siwar, Chamhuri, 2019. "Challenge of community based fish culture Program in Bangladesh: Case study on floodplain Beel mail in Rajshah," OSF Preprints sxp67, Center for Open Science.
    4. Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & DiGregorio, Monica & McCarthy, Nancy, 2004. "Methods for studying collective action in rural development," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 197-214, December.
    5. Dasgupta, Susmita & Huq, Mainul & Mustafa, Md. Golam & Sobhan, Md. Istiak & Wheeler, David, 2017. "The Impact of Aquatic Salinization on Fish Habitats and Poor Communities in a Changing Climate: Evidence from Southwest Coastal Bangladesh," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 128-139.
    6. Laura German & Hailemichael Taye, 2008. "A framework for evaluating effectiveness and inclusiveness of collective action in watershed management," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 99-116.
    7. Hossain, Istiaque & Alam, Md. Mahmudul & Siwar, Chamhuri & Dey, Madan Mohan & Bin Mokhta, Mazlin & Jaafa, Abdul Hamid & Hossain, Yeamin, 2019. "Water productivity for living aquatic resources in floodplains of Northwestern Bangladesh," OSF Preprints fg2z4, Center for Open Science.
    8. Dey, Madan M. & Spielman, David J. & Haque, A.B.M.M. & Rahman, M.S. & Valmonte-Santos, R., 2013. "Change and diversity in smallholder rice–fish systems: Recent evidence and policy lessons from Bangladesh," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 108-117.
    9. Hossai, Istiaque & Alam, Md. Mahmudul & Dey, Madan Mohan, 2019. "Productivity of Gears in Seasonal Floodplain Fishing: Case Study on Sholiamary and Gheramary Beels in Mymensingh, Bangladesh," OSF Preprints 58t4m, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:natres:v:28:y:2004:i:2:p:91-101. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1477-8947 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.