Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

W O R L D R E S O U R C E S 2 0 0 8124pressure to provide timber, fuelwood, agricultural land, andLEARNING FROM BANGLADESH’S FISHERIES INITIATIVEPilot projects can have broader impact. The demonstrable successof the MACH program has spurred its adoption by the national governmentto cover all inland freshwater fisheries. The government is alsoinstituting a project based on the lessons of the MACH program tosafeguard and enhance the country’s dwindling forest areas. It remainsto be seen how these national commitments will be kept, but nationalpolicy recognition establishes a certain measure of accountability thatwill be hard to abandon.A long-term commitment is necessary. The kind of political, social,and environmental changes reflected in the MACH program take time todevelop and take permanent hold. USAID and Winrock’s involvementover 9 years is exemplary for its dedication but also as an objectlesson. The World Bank has observed that the single most importantfactor in the lack of success in community development projects hasbeen the absence of a long-term commitment by donors.Sustainably-managed resources have limits. Such resources canonly provide so much economic benefit; the expanding needs of growingpopulations have to be accommodated. MACH developed an alternativelivelihoods program from the start to help create other options foreconomic growth for community members, thus avoiding the destructiveconsequences of overfishing. Villagers were exposed to a variety ofpotential livelihoods and offered appropriate training.Accommodate and include women. The alternative livelihoodsprogram was embraced by the women in the communities, traditionallyexcluded from male-dominated fishing. Engaging women in such enterprisescan increase the social capital of a community and hasten itsexit from extreme poverty. Microfinance efforts in these communitieshave also engaged and empowered women, by giving them an importantnew role in family finances.Local government is important. The MACH program, while establishingseveral new organizations—RMOs, RUGs—that aided therestoration and management of the inland fisheries, made sure suchgroups were not seen as a threat to local governance structures alreadyin place. The legitimacy of local government is critical to continuedsocial stability even as efforts like MACH bring about significantchange in livelihoods in a community.space for new settlements (Whitford et al. 2006:13). Nevertheless,they shelter many threatened and important species, includingtigers, elephants, and gibbons, and provide livelihoods and foodfor around 1 million people. The Co-management of TropicalForest Resources in Bangladesh project, known as Nishorgo, hasset up fledgling stakeholder co-management councils andcommittees at community and forest ecosystem level in fivewildlife-rich areas covering 23,000 ha. If it proves effective, thenew governance system, a bilateral initiative of USAID and theMinistry of Environment and Forests, will be replicated across all19 protected forests in the country (MACH 2006:13, 18–21).Organizational Scale-UpMACH’s success was also founded on the networks it assiduouslybuilt at local and national levels. In particular, setting up Federationsof Resource User Groups was vital to the sustainability ofthe 250 village-based RUGs, most of whose members were poor,illiterate, and lacking in skills and confidence. The 13 federationshave offices (built by MACH) and paid employees (includingformer Caritas field officers) who trained user group officeholders such as chairmen and secretaries in such skills as literacy,numeracy, and book and account keeping (MACH 2007:14,30–32). By mid-2007, revolving credit funds totaling more thanUS$420,000, set up by Caritas to promote financial stabilityafter project funding ends, had been handed over to the federationsto administer (MACH 2007:vi). Without their continuedoperation and support, the survival of the Resource UserGroups—which have helped to lift thousands of people out ofsevere poverty—would be in jeopardy.As described earlier, the vertical networking betweencommunity institutions and local government at union (localcouncil) and upazila (subdistrict) level has also played an essentialrole on several fronts: providing a forum for citizens’ voices,fostering better local government understanding of wetlandproblems, and rooting the MACH institutions in existing governancestructures.This has been achieved most obviously through the crossmembershipsof poor people in Federations of Resource UserGroups, Resource Management Organizations, and UpazilaFisheries Committees. But it has also involved contacts made byRMO leaders and MACH staff with elected local councilors andwith upazila officers working in fisheries, agriculture, livestockmanagement, engineering, and social welfare, whose services havebeen tapped to assist the community institutions (MACH 2003:xi).Political Scale-UpThe measurable success of MACH’s community-led recipe forreviving wetlands (and of other similar projects in Bangladeshand the region) has prompted Dhaka to embrace this approachfor all inland waters. In January 2006 the Ministry of Fisheriesand Livestock approved a new Inland Capture Fisheries Strategythat adopted key MACH components, namely:■ Co-management of wetlands and fisheries through UpazilaFisheries Committees and community-based organizations;awarding of long-term wetland leases to the latter, for nominalpayments, provided they adopted conservation-based plansand practices.■ Promotion of the best practices pioneered by MACHcommunities, including sanctuaries, restricted fishing seasons,and excavations.■ Alternative income programs for the poorest fishers, althoughwithout specified funding sources (Deppert 2006b:3).If implemented, the strategy would eventually bring some 4 millionha of seasonal floodplains and about 12,000 government-owned