In many floodplain systems, anthropogenic modifications of hydrology (dams, flood control measures and road and rail embankments etc.) and of natural wetland habitats (changed to agriculture) have blocked migration pathways and disturbed or destroyed fish breeding areas and dry season habitats. This, combined with over-fishing, has reduced recruitment to indigenous fish stocks and, so, the potential production that could be expected from the remaining floodplain10.
The declining fish yields in an environment that provides an important livelihood for millions of people world-wide has prompted much attention from governments, international donors and non-governmental organisations (NGO's). Potentially, there are a variety of solutions that could be applied. For example, release of introduced or indigenous species, habitat rehabilitation or changes to exploitation patterns (banning of gears harvesting juvenile fish or introducing reserves to protect dry season habitats). Of these, the release of seed fish (primarily species of carp) onto the floodplain is the solution that has been applied most extensively.
Release of seed fish onto the floodplain results in a culture-based capture fishery as both resident species and farm-produced fish are harvested. Culture-based fisheries lie at the interface of aquaculture, when managed extensively, and capture fisheries, when managed intensively (MRAG, 1996). The premise is that the failure of natural recruitment to tap the full productivity of a water body is met by the addition of young fish. Improving yields is dependent on the correct selection of species for release. A successful species introduction will fill a vacant niche: the greater the competition with existing species the less the production increase is likely to be.
As floodplains are complex physical, biological, social and economic environments an activity such as stock enhancement will never be straightforward. In addition, the objectives of donors and governments involved in stock enhancement extend beyond increasing fish yields. Heavy emphasis is placed on improving livelihoods for targeted beneficiaries and sustainability of enhancement programmes. This demands that enhancement programmes address the wider issues of resource management - not just the technical aspects of seed fish production and stocking. The challenge is to find an approach that succeeds technically and socially.
The design of ‘successful’ floodplain stock enhancement programmes was the subject of an MRAG report entitled: an evaluation of floodplain stock enhancement. The remainder of this chapter is drawn from this report.
The report identified key issues that should be taken into account in the design of stock enhancement programmes. It was not designed to provide a generic package of measures that should be adopted on all stocking projects: design has to be sensitive to circumstances (bio-physical and socioeconomic) and to the potential offered by existing institutions to plan and implement stocking and to mange the enhanced resource.
The study was largely desk based, with the experience of several projects being reviewed in order to distil general lessons that could guide future enhancement programmes. The projects included large scale floodplain stock enhancement projects from Bangladesh, reservoir stocking projects from Asia and a habitat restoration project from Bangladesh.
The projects are listed below with their stated objectives.
Table 6.1 Objectives of the eight projects reviewed by Project R6494 - An evaluation of Floodplain Stock Enhancement
| Third Fisheries Project, Western Bangladesh (1991–1996) | |
| • | increasing incomes, particularly of the poor, and fish production for domestic consumption and export; |
| • | supporting the fisheries development programme in the west with emphasis on private sector participation; |
| • | accelerating the expansion of fish production in floodplains; and, |
| • | strengthening sectoral institutions. |
| Second Aquaculture Development Project (SADP), Northeast Bangladesh (1988–1996) | |
| • | to provide extension and credit services for the improvement of: |
| • | shrimp culture in four coastal districts and |
| • | carp pond culture throughout 21 districts; |
| • | to enhance the floodplain capture fishery in six northeast districts. |
| Oxbow Lakes Small Scale fishermen Project, southwest Bangladesh (1988–1996/7) | |
| • | increasing the productivity of chosen water bodies and provide nutritional benefit for the population at large; |
| • | assisting the poorest fishers increase their income and social status. |
| Potential yield of South Asian small Reservoir fisheries, Thailand, India and China (1992–1994) | |
| • | estimate the yield of capture fisheries based on stock enhancement programmes in small reservoirs; |
| • | assess opportunities for enhancement of fish production through optimum stocking and harvesting strategies. |
| Culture Fisheries Assessment Methodology, Thailand, India and China (1995–1996) | |
| • | Development of methodology for the assessment of culture fisheries, in particular:- |
| • | quantitative assessment of technical management options; |
| • | quantitative bio-economic analysis; |
| • | socio-economic assessment of management options; and, |
| • | integrated framework for the appraisal of culture fisheries development options |
| Reservoir fisheries Management in Savannahket Province, Lao PDR (1996–1997) | |
| • | identify management strategies to increase the individual and community income from reservoir capture and culture fisheries, while maintaining the role of reservoirs in providing subsistence and dry season habitat for natural fish populations. |
| Indo-German Reservoir Fisheries Development Project Kerala, India (1992-) | |
| • | sustainably increase fish production in culture-based fisheries in reservoirs and therefore, income for a maximum number of families from groups of people from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. |
| Community-based Fisheries Management and Habitat Restoration, Central Bangladesh (1994–1997) | |
| • | to test an alternative method of increasing fish production and species diversity in floodplain wetlands through ecological processes which communities can manage themselves, and more specifically: |
| • | to create awareness among the local communities about conservation of habitats and biodiversity; |
| • | to strengthen organisational and functional capacity of community groups and NGOs in ecological management of aquatic resources; |
| • | to promote community-based management and protection of fisheries resources. |
Stocking projects have taken a variety of forms. All, however, have to face a set of basic issues that are critical to the outcome of the project. These include technical, biological, social and economic questions, as to:
what are the project's objectives;
which water bodies to stock (where, what size, water quality criteria);
how to stock (density, species composition, size/age, timing);
where and by whom are seed fish to be reared;
what are the objectives of fishery management;
how is fisheries management to be enforced; and
are costs to be recovered (and how).
Related to these are a series of institutional questions:
what is the role of government;
what is the role of NGO's;
what is the role of fishers;
what is the role of the community;
how to monitor (what and by whom); and,
how to assess impact.
The answers to these questions are both interrelated to each other and to the biophysical and socioeconomic context of the project: what works well in one situation may fail in another.
Stock enhancement of floodplain fisheries faces two sets of problems:
The development of a stocking strategy appropriate to the floodplain system (i.e. choice of floodplains with greatest potential, species mix, size at first stocking, stocking density, fingerling supply, floodplain management etc.); and,
The development of appropriate institutional arrangements for managing both the stocking programme and the enhanced floodplain: a key component of this is cost recovery.
Neither set can be determined independently and their joint solution must produce outcomes that best resolve the often competing claims of fisheries and/or development policy objectives: economic growth, employment, poverty alleviation, maintenance of biodiversity and economic sustainability.
The fact that individual fishers exploit a common resource is fundamental to any management intervention, such as the release of fingerlings. Therefore, the approach taken in this review is to consider floodplain enhancement as a special case of common-pool resource management (CPRM).
The sequence of activities required to enhance a floodplain through release of fingerlings is summarised in Figure 6.1. The activities have been separated into three phases: development of the stocking strategy involving assessment of the floodplain and making technical stocking decisions; fingerling supply with activities of production and transportation; and finally, post-release including management of the floodplain, harvesting and consumption, selling or processing of catch. A brief overview of each of the activities is given below.
Development of Stocking Strategy
The first activity of the sequence is selection of a suitable floodplain for stock enhancement. Projects may take a range of factors into account to assess a floodplain: the objectives of individual projects will determine which factors are chosen. The following list provides examples of factors which may be assessed:
Physical (e.g. hydrology, seasonality of the flood, morphology, flood control structures, transport links etc.);
Biological (e.g. coverage of weed, current productivity and production trends, existing species in the fishery, seasonality etc.);
Socioeconomic (e.g. history and current status of fishery, makeup of fisher communities, marketing arrangements etc.); and,
Institutional (e.g. current floodplain management, groups or organisations currently involved in the fishery, level of government involvement, attitudes of potential participants to stocking etc.).
Figure 6.1 Sequence of activities undertaken in stock enhancement of a floodplain
Once accepted for the stocking programme, projects have to decide on which species will be stocked. Selection will be based on, among other things, issues such as the available fingerling production technology, biological characteristics of individual species in reference to the floodplain environment, catch composition of the existing fishery, consumer preference, market value, and costs of production.
Decisions on stocking density, fingerling size, timing of release and effective release points will be determined by a mixture of biological assessment, logistic planning, hydrological attributes and consultation with the intended beneficiaries.
Fingerling Supply
The large scale enhancement requires the production of millions of fingerlings requiring a cost effective means of mass fry production. For example, at a stocking density of 20kg/ha and mean fingerling size of 7g, a floodplain of 1,000 ha requires 2.8 million fingerlings. Government hatcheries offer one solution for large scale production. But ‘back-yard’ hatchery techniques can also be used. In Bangladesh, one technique for rearing carp fingerlings devised by a Hungarian specialist as part of a development project over a decade ago, has resulted in a rapidly expanding hatchery industry to support aquaculture development.
Transportation of fingerlings becomes an important issue when hatcheries are remote from release points in the floodplain. Temperature and oxygen are the critical variables to be managed: in general, fingerling survival will be inversely proportional to the distance travelled.
Post-release
The significance of the moment of release depends on the objectives of the programme and the arrangements for funding. If there is external funding available and there is no need for immediate control of harvesting, the point of release signifies a change in monitoring strategy. As the fingerlings disperse, grow and are caught by different groups, the outcome of the stocking programme can be assessed only by monitoring its - necessarily - wide-ranging impact.
If, on the other hand, there is a need for control of harvesting, either to protect fingerlings during the initial growth period or to encourage cost recovery, the release of fingerlings marks the point when the common-pool nature of floodplain fisheries resource asserts itself. Prior to this, all the activities could in principle have been taken by either government, or by private enterprise or by local community initiatives.
After release, the management of the resource becomes prone to the difficulties of either controlling fishing effort at all or of doing so without jeopardising the interests of existing - and often vulnerable - stakeholders in the fishery. In this case, much will depend on finding institutional structures and use rules that will permit development of the fishery that promotes outcomes consistent with societal/project objectives.
In recent years, the management of common-pool resource systems have received considerable attention within the academic literature (Oakerson 1992; Ostrom 1990; Bromley 1992). Particular attention has been paid to factors of management systems that allow sustainable use of renewable resources at levels exceeding those achieved when access is effectively unrestricted. In this, the work of Oakerson has been seminal, providing a focus for the elaboration of theory and a framework for many of the subsequent case studies.
Fisheries management lends itself particularly well to this type of analysis. One recent volume on the management of common-pool resources (Berkes 1989), had four single-resource case studies, three of which were devoted to fisheries. This approach has also been adopted by international research organisations: ICLARM use the Oakerson framework for the analysis of fisheries management systems, using RRA/PRA techniques (Pido et al., 1996). It has been applied directly to problems arising from fish stocking, in Indian reservoirs (Hartmann, 1995), Laotian communal fish ponds (Garaway, PhD in progress) and Bangladeshi ox-bow lakes (DANIDA, 1995).
Figure 6.2 illustrates Oakerson's approach to understanding how a common-pool resource management (CPRM) system works - or how it should be developed. The model identifies four key attributes and the relationships between them. In the context of this report, the physical, biological and technical attributes of the resource system refer to the floodplain, the fishery (gears, fishing grounds), markets etc. While the decision-making arrangements are the rules (formal and informal) that govern fishing (who can fish, where, when and how) and management (how are decisions made and changed and who makes these decisions). The patterns of interaction are the collective actions resulting from individual fishers making decisions to co-operate or compete in the fishery. The outcomes are resource flows to and from different groups of stakeholders, i.e. the costs and benefits associated with floodplain fishing. Two obvious examples of outcomes include the catch per unit effort or the amount of fish consumed. The objectives of the stocking programme are effectively the desired outcomes for the enhanced floodplain system.
Figure 6.2 Framework for analysis of common-pool resource management (adapted from Oakerson, 1992)
The arrows within Figure 6.2 represent the relationship between the components of the CPR system, as identified in the boxes. Outcomes are determined through two pathways: first, arrow 3 represents a direct constraint on outcomes as the characteristics of the resource place the fundamental limit on what is possible in any CPRM system. This direct constraint is independent of human behaviour. The second path can be viewed as indirect as it incorporates human behaviour, this path involves the remaining arrows. An individual (fisher) makes decisions on the basis of the resource, i.e. arrow 1 and the rules governing its exploitation, arrow 2, the resulting collective action of all fishers affects the outcome of resource use, arrow 4. The dashed arrow 5 represents a non-causal relationship that exists, if at all, by human design.
It is argued that, for CPRM in general, the physical and biological attributes of the resource and the technical constraints to its exploitation or enhancement will determine which are the most appropriate decision rules to adopt: those that produce - through the pattern of interaction that they encourage - the desired outcome. Specifically, rules must discourage free-riding, whereby resource users allow others to bear the costs of developing or maintaining the resource, as this erodes commitment to the support of common aims and increases the chances of arriving at the sub-optimal outcome produced by open-access.
Enhancement is usually proposed as a solution to declining yields, particularly of major carps, on the floodplain. Figure 6.3 adapts Oakerson's framework to illustrate the process by which floodplain fisheries are enhanced. In overview, the particular characteristics of floodplains directly determine what range of outcomes are possible when the fishery is exploited. Individual stakeholders respond to the opportunities presented within a framework of restrictions provided by the rules - formal and informal - which govern fishing activities, access regimes and marketing of catches. The aggregate pattern of behaviour which results determines the pattern of outcomes.
The top box represents a floodplain fishery being considered for enhancement. If the outcome of the analysis indicates that the outcomes of the fishery could be improved by stock enhancement, plans must be made for implementing and managing the intervention and it's outcome. The shaded box below represents the enhanced floodplain fishery. In order to meet the desired outcomes, expressed as the complementary enhancement objectives, stakeholders need to define two key strategies. A technical strategy for the stocking program that will improve the characteristics of the fishery (arrow 3) and an institutional strategy that will institute rules and arrangements which will encourage suitable behaviour of stakeholders on the enhanced floodplain (arrows 4, 2, 1 and 5).
Floodplain fisheries are complex and dynamic systems as described in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The outcomes of management interventions, such as enhancement, will only be ‘successful’ if the strategy adopted is appropriate to local conditions. This implies that the behavioural responses of different stakeholders to changes in resource characteristics must be anticipated and, where necessary, guided by appropriate modifications in rules of use. Failure in this regard can lead to seriously sub-optimal outcomes, even when technical stocking targets are met.
Figure 6.3 Process of floodplain enhancement (adapted from Oakerson, 1992)
The application of Oakerson's framework to the design of enhancement projects produces a number of insights. The most important of these is that impact of the project - its effect on outcomes - can not be predicted simply from changes in the size and composition of catch due to stocking (Lorenzen and Garaway, 1997). Changes in these variables can affect outcomes directly but they also affect the incentives of different stakeholders to co-operate and compete within the fishery. The consequent interactions also affects who benefits and to what degree. Use rules can influence these outcomes by changing incentives. Choice of institutional structure is therefore central to ensuring that use rules can be adapted to produce project outcomes in line with project objectives (Ostrom, 1990).
Enhancement projects typically involve at least two groups of actors - the stakeholders on the floodplain and an outside agency, which can be the government or an NGO. In many cases all three groups can be involved. In this context, the first stage of institutional design is the choice of which of these institutions are involved and their respective roles in determining technical interventions and changes in use rules to support them. The second stage is the determination of use rules themselves, their adaptation in the light of experience and the mechanisms for their enforcement. The process is not, however, unidirectional -the sort of use rules needed may influence the choice of institutions and the allocation of responsibility between them.
The current trend in common-pool resource management is towards a greater involvement of the community of users. This is largely in response to the perceived failures of the so-called ‘top-down’ approach, dominated by centralised planning and decision-making. The inclusion of people who are interacting closely with their resource is widely thought to result in management that is more appropriate and sustainable (Pomeroy, 1991). Arguments for the potential of local control include: use of local knowledge, empowerment of poor, adaptation of technical inputs to local conditions, tighter control on costs, and sense of project ownership by the community.
Where the resource system is complex, variable and large, conflicts are likely between adjacent communities exploiting different components of the same stock. Mechanisms should be in place with suitable arenas (informal and/or formal) for discussion and access to conflict resolution should be rapid and low-cost. All activities should take place in a nested management structure so that support and recognition is provided at many levels from the community through to the government (Pinkerton, 1989). The role of outside agencies is therefore necessary.
NGOs may have a critical role, as - in many countries - they have extensive experience of both promoting groups and mediating in situations of conflict. Their experience of forming groups for enterprise development would have additional benefits in managing the initial stages of fingerling supply. Government has an important role in facilitating change, by providing enabling legislation and technical support, particularly in the early stages.
Where the benefits of stocking are unproven and local communities may be unwilling take on the financial risk entailed. In this case there may be an argument for government providing initial financial assistance, followed by a gradual transfer of responsibility to communities and NGO's as uncertainties (hence risks) are reduced.
What rules are appropriate can only be determined in the light of the outcomes that will satisfy the objectives of each project and the local character of the resource. In many cases multiple objectives are assigned, all of which may influence the rules adopted to some degree.
The objective that will most profoundly influence the structure of rules required, however, is that of financial sustainability. Collection of revenue to fund enhancement in the subsequent season requires that harvesting is controlled. In principle, this can be done directly, by managing operations and deducting costs from sales revenues, or indirectly, through a system of gear/catch levies or by sub-leasing portions of the fishery. All imply that access to the fishery must be restricted for some gears and/or in some seasons, raising the possibility that some groups may lose out from enhancement.
Ideally, the outcome of enhancement would result in a balance between costs and benefits for all stakeholders. This is achieved most easily if there is homogeneity in gear use and dependence on the fishery (Pinkerton, 1989). But, even where all stakeholders would stand to benefit from the proposed intervention, this does not guarantee they will not try to free-ride, i.e. obtain the benefits without bearing their share of the costs. In enhancement programmes this could take a number of forms: failing to contribute to communal labour, fishing in a closed period or area or with a prescribed gear, non-payment of fees owed etc.
Avoiding this problem is often done best by a system of mutual monitoring. Rather than rely on an outside agency to enforce regulations, rules can be enforced by fishers themselves within a framework that is sanctioned or at least accepted by the state. This provides an additional and powerful argument for providing a central management role to local organisations in which fishers participate. These organisations are then well placed to encourage collective modifications in behaviour appropriate to the condition of the fishery, impose social sanctions on rule breakers and act as arbitrators in disputes. For this to be possible, two main conditions have to be met.
The first, which is emphasised strongly by both Ostrom (1990) and Pinkerton (1989), is that the boundaries of the system and the membership of the group entitled to use it must be clear. Without mutual recognition of resource users, there can be no mutual monitoring. A corollary of this is that this form of management works best the smaller the area of the resource system and the fewer the number of communities/fishers involved.
The second condition for local enforcement of regulations is that there is an accepted schedule of sanctions, graduated in severity, that can be applied to rule breakers. If resource users are linked by kinship, then simple social sanction can be powerful. A shared ethnicity may also serve in this regard, though to a lesser degree. But more than this is often necessary: ideally there should be the ability to levy fines and, ultimately, to exclude rule breakers from the fishery altogether.
The aim of this review was to glean from past experience those factors which result in successful stock enhancement of floodplains. The outcomes of enhancement are determined by both the nature of the fishery and the behaviour of fishers and other stakeholders. Therefore, the general lessons from each of the reviewed projects were distilled into institutional and technical strategies for the design of future enhancement projects. Note that these strategies are interdependent, demanding an integrated approach for successful stock enhancement.
Enhancing a fishery provides strong economic incentives for powerful interests to establish or increase their hold over it. A technical strategy for enhancement must therefore be supported by a complementary institutional strategy, if induced changes in behaviour are not to undermine distributional objectives. A change in rules governing access to the fishery is particularly important when cost recovery is a project objective.
Greater participation of floodplain communities improves the outcomes of enhancement, profile of the project must be high - ideally generated through early community involvement in all stocking activities.
It is important to understand the patterns of behaviour in floodplain fisheries in the context of the resource and its rules. Incentives for all stakeholders are complex on the floodplain and enhancing the fishery will add another dimension to this complexity. Prediction of likely behaviour is difficult, but provides essential insights into the types of institutional strategy (organisations and rules to manage the fishery) that must accompany enhancement.
NGO involvement was one mechanism employed to improve community participation. NGO's can be valuable as: intermediaries between fishers and government agencies; support for fishers in confrontations with displaced former stakeholders, umbrella organisations co-ordinating more local groups; honest brokers able to balance the interests of different communities or groups; experienced facilitators of group formation among the poor; and, providers of credit. Additional mechanisms include consultation workshops, formal and informal meetings, shared responsibility in project development and execution (for example, fingerling production and monitoring) and proper decision making structures.
Transfer of more responsibility to floodplain communities requires intensive external support. During establishment, this support must include training and guidance in technical, financial, social and institutional aspects of resource management. The credit scheme provided baor communities with the financial independence necessary to establish and maintain their responsibilities as baor managers.
Transferring responsibility to communities often involves a change in the existing control of the fishery. Resistance to this change should be appropriately planned for with a range of mechanisms to address potential problems. Mechanisms used in past projects include provision of credit to helped establish the community's right to manage, commonly agreed and observed local rules, legal backup and ‘external’ support from government, NGO's and enhancement projects.
A complete system of rules is required if communities are to manage the enhanced resource, i.e. use-rules, collective choice rules and external rules. Use-rules govern fishing (who can fish, where, when and how) and enhancement (who, what, when and how will the resource be enhanced). Collective choice rules define the operation and remit of institutions (management groups, cooperatives etc.). For example, membership rules, sanctions for rule-breakers, rules defining the relationship between different stakeholder institutions, rules for conflict resolution etc. Rules determining membership of legitimate fishers offer powerful tools to control the distribution of benefits flowing from enhancement. External rules are those defined outside the community, e.g. by the state, but which have an impact on the community. For example, the Bangladesh government securing tenure to Oxbow Lake Management Groups and instances where conflicts in some oxbow lakes had to be dealt with in court.
Definition of floodplain communities who have a legitimate stake in the fishery is essential, similarly the boundary of the floodplain over which they have a stake must also be widely understood and agreed. This allows self monitoring and provide incentives for ‘successful’ patterns of interaction leading to commonly agreed and desired outcomes. The ‘internal’ boundaries of a floodplain will also require clarification and agreement, particularly if a cost recovery system is based around the differential productivity of fishing grounds within a floodplain system.
Rules must be appropriate to the system in which they are to be implemented: involvement of resource users, i.e. fishers, in their development and enforcement increases the likelihood of this.
A role for government is still essential for the development of floodplain enhancement due to the uncertainties surrounding floodplain enhancement activities. This means that some degree of trial and error is unavoidable and the year to year variability of floodplain fisheries make the lessons harder to learn. Government can therefore play a critical role in providing initial support while this process continues. The relationship should not encourage community dependance on government.
Government provides critical support as they provide the legal and institutional framework for resource use and have the official power to grant tenure. Therefore, where resource ownership issues are complicated the government's role is significant. In addition, government staff often have the skills and experience to provide technical support for enhancement.
An institutional framework (i.e. recognised organisations with a clear remit in the fishery, supported by a system of rules) to support stock enhancement is the only basis from which cost recovery can be addressed. Fishers with no guarantee that they will have access to future benefits have little incentive to contribute to the costs of enhancing the resource. Securing the tenure of a fishery is fundamental to an institutional strategy for enhancement which requires cost recovery.
Rules determining the recovery of costs must reflect the particular characteristics of the resource. For example, the fees demanded of different fishing grounds in the floodplain could reflect the level of economic surplus available from that habitat. Differences between the level of involvement of fishers and in the types of gears used, make it difficult to define a payment for resource access that is both uniform and fair. Rules governing cost recovery must be simple enough to administer and enforce.
Increased productivity from enhancement is not evenly distributed over fishing grounds of the floodplain or over time. Benefits are a function of the access regime in place (lease, licence, private ownership or open access). Patterns of resource access and income distribution can be expected to respond dynamically to the opportunities offered by stocking. Where and when the economic surplus from fish production is concentrated will affect both socioeconomic outcomes and the ease of cost recovery. Therefore, understanding the flows of benefits in floodplain fisheries is essential for the identification of opportunities for cost recovery and the development of an institutional strategy.
As long as there is a vacant or under-occupied niche, floodplain stocking can result in significant increases in fish production. An indicator of such a niche may be the historic decline of certain species. Technically, there is a short-fall in recruitment of a given species.
The technical stocking strategy developed in Third Fisheries was as follows: fingerlings (~10g) produced by private hatcheries were released to the floodplain at the onset of the flood. A species mix of common carp, catla, mrigal and rui performed well at combined stocking densities between 13kg/ha and 26kg/ha. Within the overall enhancement strategy adopted, flexibility to respond to the requirements and constraints of individual floodplains is essential for success.
Flexibility is essential as floodplains are complex environments, in both space and time, with hydrology the dominant force. In summary, a heterogeneous community of fishers harvest a variety of species, using many gears from a range of seasonal habitats. These characteristics are the key technical constraint to introduction of successful stocking activities. Variability within and between floodplains demands that projects tailor the overall enhancement strategy to the particular characteristics of individual floodplains. Adaptive management, the process of formal learning through management experience, is the best approach to refining the strategy to local conditions.
Support for beel-side nurseries has many advantages: reducing the technical problems of transporting fingerlings to release points; building the capacity of communities to manage the floodplain fishery; linking stocking strategies to management of harvesting and so setting a framework from which adaptive management could take place.
Development of an appropriate monitoring system is a key component to all enhancement projects. Management information is required at three levels: direct management of the resource: management of the national enhancement programme; and a comparison between enhancement programmes and other forms of assistance (donor requirements). There are overlaps between the information needed at each level, but there are also major differences. The appropriate level will be determined by the objectives of an enhancement programme and the capacity of the relevant institution to carry out monitoring.
Observation of a conservation period through control of fishing effort was found to improve the technical returns from stocking. However, complexities inherent to floodplain fisheries made enforcement of such a reduction in fishing problematic. The cost of a total ban was significant and was carried by professional fishers, a group of intended beneficiaries who ultimately lost. Therefore, any management of activities after the release of fingerlings to the floodplain must recognise the common-pool resource nature of the fishery. Involvement of appropriately experienced NGOs in support of the management role of local communities is a key mechanism to the development of successful floodplain management.
In order to design a stocking programme, three central questions have to be addressed:-
What are the desired outcomes of stock enhancement. The criteria by which these can be judged are the project/programme objectives which must be clearly defined in order to develop the stocking strategy;
What is the best institutional strategy that should be established to support stocking and so ensure that stakeholder behaviour on the floodplain will result in the desired outcomes; and,
What are the key characteristics of the resource that will place a fundamental limit on what can be achieved through stocking. Given this, what is the best technical strategy for releasing seed fish that will ultimately increase yields from the fishery.
Enhancement of floodplain fisheries must balance the claims of competing societal objectives (fish production, income, nutrition, equity, biodiversity, government revenue) within the physical, biological and socioeconomic constraints imposed by the system. Project design must cover a hierarchy of issues from the institutional (organisations/institutions involved, responsibilities, participation of beneficiaries etc) to the technical (species stocked, densities, timing of release, fingerling size, management of exploitation etc).
