Work, Community, Environment and the Shrimp Export Industry in Bangladesh, India and Thailand

The international expansion of the seafood industry over the past 50 years is part of a broader process of globalization of systems of food production, distribution and consumption. This expansion has been fuelled by a growth of consumption of seafood products in Japan, USA and the EU, increased exploitation of open capture fisheries, a rapid growth in aquaculture production and the development of new processing and transport technologies. Shrimp is one of the most important seafood commodities traded internationally and is exported by over 100 countries, with a growing proportion of total supply coming from aquaculture. The shrimp aquaculture export sector has been the subject of considerable scholarly and policy debate concerning its social and environmental impacts, particularly in developing countries, which supply the bulk of farmed shrimp to the export market. This chapter examines the impact of the shrimp aquaculture export industry on labour, community, and environment in three important exporter countries, Bangladesh, India and Thailand (hereafter referred to as BIT). Section one gives an overview of current trends in the global production, trade and consumption and summarizes the key features of the shrimp industry in the three countries. Section two looks at the impact of the trade on work and labour conditions in the various sub-sectors of the industry in the three countries. Section three turns to the broader environmental and social consequences of the trade for local environments and communities. It illustrates the environmental impact of shrimp farming through a case study from Bangladesh. Section four summarizes the main points of the chapter. The chapter is based on secondary sources supplemented by the author’s research in Bangladesh.