INTEGRATED PROTECTED AREA CO-MANAGEMENT (IPAC) - BIDS

• Care was taken in calculating marketing costs, which often vary to a great extent, depending
on locations.
• Operating costs of agents such as Mahajans posed difficult to obtain as they were found to
be less cooperative, in most cases.
• Retailers' transport costs were estimated by taking information on total transportation cost
of all types of products bought at a time, and then apportioning this for the selected items.
This required some standardization of transportation cost, which could have resulted in
under or over estimation although this is assumed to be counter balancing.
• Given the multi-dimensional pattern of flows, the aggregate estimate of the “number of
agents involved”/“jobs created” from the Sundarbans would be tentative in this study.
• A stated ban on timber felling remains in effect for the Sundarbans since long (1989). Some
of the actors associated with timbers have been displaced; some have altogether abandoned
the profession. The flows for timber were carried out with the help of some timber traders
who used to be in operation in the past. Some reported unofficial logging (e.g., in
Patharghata) has been contemplated to capture this. Fortunately, ban on golpata has been
withdrawn and during our survey the harvest of golpata was in full swing.
• Interviewing resource users at the business place was found to be difficult, and so was to
locate and interview them at individual homes. In particular, the resource collectors
constitute a floating population who search for livelihoods particularly when there is a
moratorium or a lean season. On the other hand, people keep busy in their trades at the time
of harvests. Besides, most people for interviews appeared to be suspicious, particularly so in
the case of Mahajans and Aratdars.
• Lack of standardization of SRF products (e.g., crab, sada fish, gura fish, hilsha) in terms of
size, quality and grade posed a major difficulty in the investigation of value chains 46 . To
surmount this problem, this brief study had little option but to consider an average grade of
the products.
• Seasonality of SRF activities posed another major problem in conducting interviews. Except
for fish, different harvests have different time periods (See Table 1.4). Following
inaccessibility and poor transportation system in the SIZ, a considerable portion of time was
required in traveling over huge SIZ areas for data collection.
Maximum care was taken to overcome the above problems. The assistance from a number of
NGOs (CCEC and PRADIPAN, in particular) was useful in selecting the stakeholders; it was
important to ensure that the participation of stakeholders remained neutral and non-partisan.
A number of problem analyses were carried out with people, particularly at the bottom layers,
that is, collectors of a number of SRF products. The core of the problem was their “low
income”. The reason for which the study team did the problem analysis or constructed problem
trees, was to understand the reasons for the low income of the SRF collectors. The “cause and
effect” relationships of the “low income of the SRF collectors” were elaborated in the problem
trees. The analyses were particularly important to upgrade the situation of the bottom layer
actors of the value chains. The subsequent objective analysis from the problem tree gave clear
conception regarding potential interventions, some of which are suggested in the final chapter on
policy implications.
46 For example, crabs have at least 16 grades according to sizes and weights.
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