1. WELFARE AND THE ROLE OF FISH
ROLE OF FISH IN RURAL LIVELIHOODS:
METHODOLOGY FOR A WELFARE-BASED ASSESSMENT
Joshua Nasielski*, Eric Baran and John Tress
WorldFish, Greater Mekong Region, Cambodia,
INTRODUCTION
In Southeast Asia rural inhabitants typically engage in a portfolio of activities, making it difficult to place individuals into discreet occupational groups. Although rice farming is the central activity of most rural households, fishing can also play an important role in livelihoods. For instance in Cambodia while only 2% of households engage in full-time fishing 53% of households fish part-time; nationwide, fish provides 81% of dietary animal protein. However the limited number of full time professional fishers and the spatial and temporal variability in fishing activities results in the role of capture fisheries being overlooked in national surveys and statistics. In turn the importance of small scale fisheries in rural welfare remains poorly recognized by governments and in development strategies. We present below elements of the project “Assessing economic and welfare values of fish in the Lower Mekong Basin”. We developed two complementary techniques to integrate fishing’s spatial and temporal variability into surveys, in order to better quantify the role of fish in household welfare.
TEMPORAL VARIABILITY IN FISHING
The project originally provided funding for 12 months of field work, i.e. for monitoring of seasonal activities. Such time frame excludes inter-annual variability and reduces the chance to identify income and expenditure shocks (accident, disease, flooding, drought, etc.) and the role played by fish as a source of cash to cope with these shocks. We therefore extended the sampling over two years to better cover the temporal variability. It was also recognized that one round of surveys (747 household interviews nationwide) requires 3 months of field work, resulting in early questionnaires being gathered almost one season apart from the late questionnaires of the same survey. We subsequently designed a protocol based on three survey rounds over 2 years, using questionnaires detailing activities and shocks of the past 12 months. From these 3 rounds, each covering 12 month periods, 36 months of information is gathered. Months falling within data collection periods and distant recollection can be trimmed, leaving 24 months of data gathered during 9 months of field work (Figure 3). Thus the original budget allows covering temporal variability in fishing over 2 years.
The 3 months saved from the original 12 month budget for field work was used to buy digital tablets and digitize the questionnaire, so that data could be recorded in digital format in the field and become immediately available for analysis.
SPATIAL VARIABILITY IN FISHING
Studies on fishing tend to focus on places where people fish, at the expense of statistical representativeness at the national level. To avoid this bias, we designed a survey integrating Fishing Dependency as a stratification variable reflecting spatial variability in fishing. Fishing dependency reflects the proportion of fishers in the population and the poverty level of the commune. The proportion of fishers in the population originates from a national census asking for primary and secondary occupation; this number is complemented with a number of unaccounted fishers derived from another national database quantifying fishing boats. The proportion of fishers in the population is weighted by a village poverty score produced for each village by the Ministry of Planning. That weighting reflects the fact that poorer communes are more dependent on natural resources since they have less economic alternatives.
Such mapping can also help select priority zones for development interventions.
This methodology resulted in the first mapping ever of fishing dependency in Cambodia (Figure 2).
WELFARE AND THE ROLE OF FISH
The project characterizes household welfare as a combination of wealth, nutrition, labor, health and resilience. These indicators are quantified (wealth, nutrition and labor) or qualified (health and resilience) using questionnaire-based surveys. We then investigate the relative role of fish in each relevant indicator (Figure 1). .
CONCLUSION
By acknowledging and better reflecting in a socioeconomic survey the fact that fishing includes both spatial and temporal variability, and framing that variability in a welfare approach going beyond socioeconomics, substantial progress can be made towards understanding the diverse roles fisheries play in rural livelihoods. It is the plan of the project “Assessing economic and welfare values of fish in the Lower Mekong Basin” to clarify these roles in Cambodia in the coming 2 years.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This research project is funded by the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)