Historically there has only been limited concern with targeting of poor people. This is partly due to assumptions that downstream benefits of general increases in aquaculture production would lead to livelihood benefits for the poor. Where there has been targeting there is a growing awareness that those targeted have rarely been from the poorest groups, and often from the upper levels of rural society.
If poor people are not targeted the benefits that accrue to non-poor groups are often used to strengthen their own economic position, leading to further differentiation, and further restricting opportunities for poor people's entry into economically viable aquaculture production. Rather than 'trickling-down' benefits may in fact 'trickle-up'.
Targeting is necessary in order to:
By relying on one set of indicators to identify poor people we may miss considerable sections of the population that are poor in other ways. A common approach to identifying poor people has been to apply a 'poverty line' (determined by a range of criteria such as income, expenditure, calorie intake). However there are several problems with this kind of approach.
Recent understandings of poverty have illustrated that the poor are not a homogenous group, and that there are lots of different categories of 'poor people'. In recognition of this, many donors refer to target groups of 'vulnerable poor', 'tomorrow's poor' and 'the poorest of the poor'.
Once again context is decisive in determining categories of poor people. People have their own categories of who is poor people based on local characteristics and causes of poverty. The range of categories of poor people in Bangladesh is presented below.
The categories of poor people depend on local circumstances. It is significant to note that within the 'poor' there may be many different categories, and that some groups may be so marginalised that they are not even represented in 'communities' or villages.
Gender is very often a crucial factor in determining poverty. In many situations women (and girl children) have limited access to resources, and limited livelihood options. Women are often poorly represented in village meetings, and have limited influence. Even within poor households women and girl children may not receive shares from production equal to those of men and boys. Female-headed households in many parts of Asia are often identified by local people as constituting a specific category of poor people. There is also growing evidence that as with other categories of poor people, wild aquatic resources are of particular importance for poor women, and that aquaculture activities based near the homestead hold advantages over other production activities.
Based on the practical experience represented in the Expert Consultation there are a number of recommendations regarding targeting.
There has been some concern that aquaculture interventions have not always directly addressed the needs of the poorest people. It has sometimes been argued that as aquaculture requires resources such as land, ponds, water, credit and other inputs that by definition those involved in aquaculture are not the very poorest. Experience from the Expert Consultation clearly demonstrates that if appropriately planned there are considerable opportunities for poor people's entry.
While poor people face constraints to entry into all production based interventions aquaculture offers significant advantages over other activities (such as farming, livestock).
These include:
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Box 3: Recommendations for targeting · Targeting is necessary and appropriate, helping to prioritise and focus, thereby ensuring efficiency · Targeting should be based on a range of criteria and a range of participatory methods · Local people's categories of the poor and explanations for poverty should be applied · Gender issues are key - there should be greater emphasis on targeting women applying gender differentiated data, ensuring the effective participation of women · Targeting should be inclusive rather than exclusive - there may be good reasons for including non-poor (for example to overcome jealousy and prevent conflict). Targeting should aim to include the broadest group possible, but developing specific mechanisms to overcome the constraints to poorer people's entry, and to ensure that benefits accrue to poorer people · Targeting poor people is a continuous part of the development process. It is important to continually refine strategies so that they are appropriate to poor people's needs · Poor people should be involved in defining objectives and strategies, and indicators of 'success' · Applying a range of categories of poor people is also an important means of measuring impact on different groups · Not targeting the poor poses a significant risk of exacerbating differentiation between rich and poor, increasing marginalisation and social conflict |
Photo: K. Pratt, Laos 1999.
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Box 4: Categories of poor people - experience from Bangladesh Experience from Bangladesh indicates that there may be many different social categories, and many different categories of poor people. These may include the following categories of households: · Rich - large landholdings, cattle & draught power, produce surpluses, employ wage labour, can get loans, dominate local power structure · Middle - moderate access to land, have cattle & access to draught power, no food deficits but small surplus, have access to credit but not to meet consumption needs · Socially poor - have some land, able to meet household food requirements for 2-6 months from their own production. Adopt various livelihood strategies to meet their needs. Good ties to better-off families and able to secure employment and access credit in times of crisis. Also have access to government & NGO interventions during crisis periods · Helpless poor - landless or functionally landless but do have homestead, no food security & can suffer from continuous food deficits, wage labour and share-cropping, vulnerable to shocks (viz illness), no fall back in crisis periods, rarely have access to government loans but may be able to access NGO loans · Bottom (or 'Hated') poor - landless with neither homestead nor arable land, living on borrowed land, poor quality houses, living in constant fear of eviction, may be headed by widow or elderly man, no able-bodied wage earners or wages insufficient to support family, always hungry, women and children engaged in food foraging, collecting fuel, and begging, high prevalence of illness due to poor food access, no access to loans, considered too much of a risk for NGOs to work with them, may not be identified as being part of the community and may be excluded from participatory wealth ranking exercises |
Communal water resources can be managed if access issues are resolved.
Photo: I. de Borhegyi.
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Box 5: Creating opportunities for poorer people Breaking up the production cycle to provide opportunities for poor and/or landless people:
Supporting access to water bodies:
Providing inputs - or co-ordinating with other projects Collective management of aquatic resources and dry season refuges |
There is a growing body of regional experience of aquaculture interventions working with some of the poorest groups, even those with no land resources. This kind of experience could well be adapted to other situations.
While opportunities for poorer people do exist unless the structural reasons for poverty are addressed, the benefits may be limited or short-lived.
The example from Bangladesh illustrates the need to secure and enforce poor people's rights of access to and control over common resources. This may involve supporting their legal rights against the interests of powerful elites. Such strategies require specialised support outside the aquatic resources sector, and innovative partnerships.
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Box 6: Targeting the Landless for Aquaculture Experience from the Northwest Fisheries Extension Project, Bangladesh NFEP promoted a variety of culture systems including hapa spawning and nursing of fish, hapa nursing of Macrobrachium post-larvae to juveniles and cage culture of fish. This enabled totally landless households, who were perhaps squatting on river banks, to generate income and animal protein from fish culture activities if they could get assess to a water body. Rice-fish culture was also promoted by NFEP and was adopted by some households working as share-croppers i.e. paying over a crop share (up to 50%) for the right to cultivate someone else's land. Working with the totally landless requires longer term support since they are totally without safety nets in the event that the venture fails. While even with NFEP support there were some cases where successful women's cage groups were forced off water bodies by powerful elites seeking to extract rent, there were also some extremely encouraging successes. |
The strategy of supporting model farmers and model villages has a long history in extension. However there are often difficulties with such an approach:
Photo: K. Vijaykumar
However being able to learn from one's peers, and seeing successful practice has proved to be a very effective mechanism of extension. There is also valuable experience of overcoming these difficulties, for example by organising extension activities inviting the whole village on masse to see what the poor pond farmers were doing.
Collective action is a complex process that requires continuous consultation. Although this takes time the long-term benefits may be substantial. Collective action - whether based on class, occupation, or community - has often been advocated and widely adopted. For many NGOs, poor people organising themselves to secure access to and control over resources, and to represent their own interests are development objectives in themselves, rather than merely a means to an end.
There are many examples of supporting collective action of poor people in order to organise and share activities, and to better represent their own interests. Community management of water bodies has been applied in many situations, usually addressing one of the following:
When using terms such as 'community' it is important to be wary of making assumptions that all those in the community have shared interests, and derive equal benefits from project interventions. Many of the poorer households, including women, may not be adequately represented in community meetings, and the most marginalised (often transient) poor may not be members of established communities.
Benefits of community activities may not be evenly distributed. For example, enhancement of water bodies may lead to greater competition over the resources and the displacement of poorer people. If poor people's fishing gear is not appropriate for catching stocked species, they will not derive any benefits and may even lose out.
Even where benefits of community management appear to be evenly distributed, if because of wider economic factors (such as debt, lack of economic options) poor people are forced to migrate during the fishing season, again they will not derive any benefits.
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Box 7: Targeting Women - experience from CAGES, Bangladesh In 2001 some 62% of cage operators (total 6953) were woman. However this has increased from 43% in 1998, 58% in 1999, until we reached 62% in 2000 and also in 2001. The increase in woman's participation has been possible after it was shown by experience that cage culture fitted well with woman's traditional household activities. It is less appropriate for men since they often spend a considerable amount of time out with the homestead, and are less able to feed the fish - the most time consuming activity. However woman farmers made 24% less money than male operators (Tk. 918 compared to Tk. 1210 for men). So why should this be? (data from 1999). 1. The first point is that there are more extreme poor woman than male cage operators - almost double the number, and as shown above this has implications on their resources and ability to participate in high input high output systems. CAGES offers a wide range of different systems, the resources and opportunities of the farmer determining which system is recommended. 2. Secondly woman have for sale only 69% of the total fish stocked, while men have an average of 74%. The reasons for this are that woman farmers consume over twice as much fish in the household (9% compared to 4%). These fish are likely to be valuable sources of protein for these households, especially as cage culture provides fish during the monsoon season when household vulnerability is at it highest. Interestingly the percentage of total stocked fish available at harvest is the same for men and woman at 78%. This figure hides the fact that woman suffer from more poaching than men (1.4% compared to 0.6% for men), which is compensated for by woman having fewer mortalities during the culture period, probably due to the greater time woman have to feed and manage the cage. 3. Finally women earn less due to a lower price obtained at market. This is true of all species, and is representative of the fact it is not culturally acceptable for woman to sell their fish at market and therefore have an incomplete knowledge of fish price and are vulnerable to cheating by middlemen. Examples are known of sons cheating their mothers in this way. |
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Box 8: Dry season refuge management - notes from the experience of the Aquaculture Outreach Project in Cambodia · Sustainable aquatic resources management is important in lowland Cambodia. · Targeting the poor in rural areas through communal and common property resources are prime interventions. The pressure from donor agencies is usually to target the poor or 'poorest of the poor'. The pressure on local development agencies (local government, NGOs, etc.) is to demonstrate progress and successes. · Need to assess the aims and objectives of the collaborating agency · Remit to oversee and direct the development of the aquatic resources sector, one objective is to address poverty. · Risk in addressing poverty since the possibility of not achieving success is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as being higher. · An important strategy is the management of dry-season refuges, with the main aim to increase the wild fish production · A starting point was needed, and the obvious one to interest villagers was to "stock" the refuge with adult fish (increasing the number of broodstock). · Frequent visits by government staff led to villagers coming up with own initiatives · The focus was on technical interventions, little attention was paid to the issues of who stood to benefit or to loose, who was participating and who were driving the process. · After one year, the village was convinced. However, who was the 'village' had not been addressed, nor whether all had benefited, whether those not participating had benefited, or whether earlier fishers had made a net gain or loss. · Subsequent reviews picked up on these points, followed by increased effort in assessing the distribution of the benefits. It was clear that this was possible since the 'technology' was working and produced successful results. · The process of learning how to target development to provide benefits to the poor often requires that the agent that is promoting this is 'credible' in the sense of producing tangible results that generate clear successes. · The desire to improve on a success is natural and a positive way of introducing additional aspects of development work. |
Integration of mulberry and fish ponds in China.
Photo: H. Zhang.
Often water resources are under-utilized due to lack of fingerlings for stocking.
Photo: K. Pratt, Laos 1999.
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Box 9: Collective action strategies There are many examples of collective action strategies including: · Leasing water bodies · Securing access to common water bodies · Establishing community management regimes with locally devised rules and regulations governing access to fishing grounds, reserve areas, types of gear that can be used, how rents are collected, and how benefits are distributed · Enhancement of communal water bodies, and establishment of locally devised rules and regulations · Dry season refuge management · Establishing farmer groups · Supporting credit and savings groups Organising groups takes considerable time. This is often underestimated in project planning, and as a result is often hurried with limited success. However, if properly approached, there are long-term benefits to supporting poor people to organise themselves. |
Home grown fish are sold to provide a daily household income.
Photo: K. Pratt, Laos 1999.
Poor people face considerable constraints to undertaking any new, risky venture with even low risk, and low-input technologies. The need to provide inputs to support the poor raises several issues.
For some of the most extremely poor people, the causes of their poverty may be so multi-faceted and deep-rooted with immediate pressing concerns of day-to-day survival that aquatic resource-based interventions may not be most appropriate. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that in many circumstances in Asia common aquatic resources are of fundamental importance for some of the most marginalised poor. Increasing differentiation and competition over common resources are often significant factors causing further marginalisation. Securing rights of access to and control over these types of aquatic resources for poor people, and establishing equitable management regimes, is therefore of fundamental importance.
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Box 10: Providing subsidies - notes from CAGES Bangladesh When the project subsidized feed inputs this inhibited farmer innovation. At this time the farmers did not want to give the fish large quantities of this relatively expensive feed, often leading to inadequate feeding. When the subsidy was withdrawn, farmers used a wide range of locally available feeds, thought about their resources and opportunities, which resulted in locally sustainable, more profitable aquaculture. |
