Project Report: AAS-2012-28
Resilient livelihoods and food security
in coastal aquatic agricultural systems:
Investing in transformational change
Supported by
Project Report: AAS-2012-28
Resilient livelihoods and food security in coastal aquatic
agricultural systems: Investing in transformational change
Please cite this report as:
Acknowledgments:
CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems
(2012). Resilient livelihoods and food security in coastal aquatic
agricultural systems: Investing in transformational change. CGIAR
Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems, Penang,
Malaysia. Project Report: AAS-2012-28.
This report was prepared by a team led by Blake D. Ratner, with
contributions from David J. Mills, Patrick Dugan, Michael Phillips,
Stephen J. Hall, Ranjitha Puskur, Len Garces, Anne-Marie Schwarz,
Malcolm Beveridge, and Wayne Rogers, with research assistance
from Mubashir Qasim. John Thomas and Cristina Rumbaitis del
Rio provided comments on a draft. Florine Lim, Samuel Stacey,
and Jeevan Marimothoo assisted with graphics and production.
Selected excerpts and overall approach are drawn from the CGIAR
Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems Program
Proposal (2011), prepared by WorldFish and three other CGIAR
Centers (Bioversity, IWMI, and CIAT), along with a suite of global,
regional, and national partners who participated in the overall
program design process and consultations in each of the ive
initial program countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Philippines,
the Solomon Islands, and Zambia). Preparation of this report was
inanced by the Rockefeller Foundation and the CGIAR Research
Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems.
2
or more live on less than US$1.25 a day. In these communities,
women constitute a disproportionate share of the poor due to
unequal gender relations and diferential access to and control of
resources.
Key Messages
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Coastal aquatic agricultural systems are generally highly
productive, but multiple constraints limit the ability of
poor families to harness this productivity to improve food
security, nutrition, and income.
Securing improvements in isheries and aquaculture for
poverty reduction requires addressing these constraints in
a multi-sectoral context, recognizing that families dependent
upon aquatic agricultural systems pursue a diversity of
livelihood options.
Transformational change depends on locally driven
solutions, rooted in multi-stakeholder dialogue and
participatory analysis of the constraints and opportunities
in each location, linking solutions across scales.
Many of the drivers of change—including international
trade and investment, climate change, and ecosystem
degradation—are shared among coastal regions in Asia,
the Paciic, and Africa, providing important opportunities
for exchange of lessons and experience.
Technological and market innovation to improve productivity
and income of poor coastal ishers and farmers must be
complemented by investments that enhance their
resilience to natural disasters and economic or institutional
shocks and that strengthen their social, political, and
economic rights.
The CGIAR is pursuing these goals through an integrated
program of action research aimed at improving food
security for 50 million households by 2022, in collaboration
with national and local institutions and international
development partners.
This report provides an overview of the scale and scope of
development challenges in coastal aquatic agricultural systems,
their signiicance for poor and vulnerable communities, and the
opportunities for partnership and investment that support eforts
of these communities to secure resilient livelihoods in the face of
multiple risks.
1. Coastal systems in crisis
Coastal regions provide an exceptionally high concentration of
beneicial ecosystem services, making them among the most
productive ecosystem types globally. For this reason, coasts have
universally and disproportionately attracted human settlement,
with 40% of the world’s population inhabiting the coastal
zone.2 The productivity of these systems comes from isheries,
aquaculture, agriculture, and livestock production, coupled with
critical supporting services, such as transport and trade. Within
coastal systems, ‘hotspots’ of concentrated productivity, including
embayments, river deltas, mangrove forests, and coral reef areas,
have attracted the highest concentrations of settlement. An
estimated 275 million people, for example, live within 30 km
of coral reefs and draw extensively on them for livelihood and
food security.3 Beyond the immediate coast, continental shelves
provide a wealth of services, including an estimated 25% of global
primary productivity—the ecosystem processes that underlie
food production.4
Given the high productivity of aquatic systems (both marine and
inland), it is paradoxical that so many who rely on them remain
in poverty. A growing body of evidence highlights a consistent
failure of classical approaches to resource science, governance,
and development intervention to recognize and integrate the
complexity of rural/coastal production systems and the
diversity of scales at which system drivers operate. Classical
marine resource science and management approaches, for
example, have developed largely in the context of single-species,
large-scale, commercially valuable isheries in industrialized
countries. Yet less than 0.5% of ishers globally operate in this
context.5 Conventional approaches in the ‘ishery manager’s
toolbox’ focused narrowly on managing ish stocks are not
transferable to the context in which the vast majority of ishers
operate—that of small-scale isheries in the developing world.6
Introduction
Rising food prices, climate stress, and increased competition over
the natural resource systems that underpin global food production
have sharpened focus on the challenge of feeding an estimated
9 billion people by mid-century. The majority of the world’s poor
today depend on the health of productive agroecosystems
for their livelihoods and nutritional security. Strengthening
the resilience, productivity, and livelihood beneits of aquatic
agricultural systems presents a major opportunity to address
the twin challenges of food security and poverty reduction.
Aquatic agricultural systems (AAS) are diverse production and
livelihood systems where families cultivate a range of crops, raise
livestock, farm or catch ish, gather fruits and other tree crops,
and harness natural resources such as timber, reeds, and wildlife.
Aquatic agricultural systems occur along freshwater loodplains,
coastal deltas, and inshore marine waters, and are characterized
by dependence on seasonal changes in productivity, driven by
seasonal variation in rainfall, river low, and/or coastal and marine
processes.1
Policies governing the operation of isheries and aquaculture
are often based on the joint premises of maximizing yield and
protecting resources, and rely on centralized management and
enforcement. In most cases, developing countries do not have the
human, infrastructure, or inancial capacity to enforce isheries
regulations or generate the data necessary to centrally manage
resource extraction. In most poor regions, this has led to ‘de
facto open-access’ isheries, where increasing market pressure,
population growth, ecosystem degradation, and ishing eiciency
have overrun management systems.
Despite this natural productivity, the farming, ishing, and herding
communities who live in these systems are among the poorest
and most vulnerable in their countries and regions. More than
500 million people depend on aquatic agricultural systems for
their livelihoods, but the constraints they face mean that a third
1
2
3
4
5
6
We define aquatic agricultural systems as systems in which the annual production dynamics of freshwater and/or saline or brackish coastal systems
contribute significantly to total household income.
Agardy, T., G.N. Sciara, and P. Christie (2011). Mind the gap: Addressing the shortcomings of marine protected areas through large scale marine spatial
planning. Marine Policy 35: 226–232.
WRI (2011). Reefs at Risk Revisited. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute.
UNEP (1992). The World Environment 1972–1992: Two Decades of Challenge. New York: Chapman and Hall.
Mills, D.J., L. Westlund, G. de Graaf, R. Willmann, Y. Kura, and K. Kelleher (2011). Underreported and undervalued: Small-scale fisheries in the developing
world. In R.S. Pomeroy and N.L. Andrew, eds., Small-Scale Fisheries Management: Frameworks and Approaches for the Developing World. Oxfordshire, UK:
CABI.
Andrew, N.L., and L. Evans (2011). Approaches and frameworks for management and research in small-scale fisheries. In R.S. Pomeroy and N.L. Andrew,
eds., Small-Scale Fisheries Management: Frameworks and Approaches for the Developing World. Oxfordshire, UK: CABI.
3
aquatic agricultural systems share characteristics with communities
in other agroecosystems, including drylands, semi-arid tropics,
and forest margins, ‘left behind’ by the Green Revolution in
agriculture and requiring a diferent kind of response.9
Coastal habitats have degraded at an alarming rate in recent
decades, with systems attracting the highest population densities
sufering the most. Some 20% of all mangroves have been lost
since 1980, and some 40% of coral reef systems are considered
severely or highly degraded.7 Concurrently, coastal systems have
increasingly failed to reach their potential to support coastal
populations (see Box 1). While there are signs of recovery in some
well-studied, large-scale isheries responding to conservation and
management eforts in recent decades, most small-scale isheries,
particularly those in developing countries, are data-poor or have
‘unassessed’ ish stocks that are declining quickly.8
Coastal systems comprise multiple production systems, people
and livelihoods, governance institutions, and external drivers.
Attempts to address the crisis in global isheries must necessarily
confront the challenge of securing livelihoods for poor AAS
communities, recognizing the inseparable links between the
large-scale and small-scale subsectors, inland and marine
production, and wild capture isheries and aquaculture (see
Box 2). Also vital is an appreciation for the roles that farming,
livestock production, and agricultural processing and trade play
in the livelihood opportunities and decision making of coastal
communities. A narrow preoccupation with either economic
productivity or ecosystem status must give way to interventions
and management conceived around drivers of change and a
‘whole-system’ approach to managing coastal resources and
building resilient livelihoods.
Management institutions
focused
primarilyon natural
resource
exploitation or conservation are not primed to cope with the
rapidly changing face of the coasts. Population growth, urban
expansion, increased demand for resources from diverse users,
globalized markets, and climate change are among common
challenges that combine with profound issues of economic,
social, and institutional marginalization to drive poverty and
vulnerability. In this respect, poor rural communities in coastal
Box 1. Ghana’s coastal fisheries on the edge.
is
s
National ish consumption in Ghana is among the highest
in Africa (approaching 30 kg/capita/year) and represents
on average about 60% of animal protein supply.1 For
coastal communities, ish is even more important as
a source of nutrition, as well as a base of the coastal
economy.
st
The isheries for small pelagic ish are the most critical for
food security, and represent around 80% of the total ish
catch by the artisanal leet. As much as 20% of the
national workforce may rely directly or indirectly on the
isheries sector.2
t. As
rely
Small-scale ishing vessels in Ghana
opportunities facing rural households. Data from past peak
catches supported by bioeconomic modeling suggest that
yields of at least three times the current catch of small pelagic
species could be achieved through improved management.3
A groundswell of support for reform among stakeholders and
donors has created a window for transformation that may
represent a ‘last shot’ at avoiding catastrophic collapse of these
systems.
Alarmingly, both national statistics and isher opinions
point to a dramatic decline in the resource over the last
decade, resulting in increased imports of ish and severely
straining livelihood systems and food security in coastal
villages throughout the country. Unconstrained growth
in all major leets alone could account for heavy
overexploitation. However, this is massively compounded
by heavily subsidized fuel and increasing ishing power of
individual vessels.
WorldFish, in partnership with the University of Rhode Island,
local NGO Friends of the Nation, and others, is working to
address this need for governance reform. Rather thanto:
a simple
D.
macro-level analysis of resource rents and opportunities for
gains in economic eiciency through a reallocation of use
rights, sound decision making for policy and institutional
reform requires locally driven analysis to determine the types
of innovations that will jointly support resource conservation,
livelihood improvement, and social equity.4
The only conceivable pathway to improved ishery yield,
well-being, and resilience among coastal communities in
Ghana is radical reform in the way isheries systems are
governed. Top-down, command-control systems must be
replaced by inclusive decision making that engages
communities directly in formulating management plans
and rules, complemented by sustainable livelihood
initiatives rooted in understanding the constraints and
1
2
3
4
7
8
9
WorldFish Center, CRC, and USAID (2010). Livelihood diversification and fishing communities in Ghana’s Western Region; Finegold, C., A. Gordon,
D. Mills, L. Curtis, and A. Pulis (2010). Western Region Fisheries Sector Review, WorldFish Center.
Atta-Mills, J., J. Alder, and U.R. Sumaila (2004). The decline of a regional fishing nation: The case of Ghana and West Africa. Natural Resources
Forum 28: 13–21.
Finegold, C., A. Gordon, D. Mills, L. Curtis, and A. Pulis (2010). Western Region Fisheries Sector Review, WorldFish Center; Bailey, M., U.R. Sumaila,
and M. Lindroos (2010). Application of game theory to fisheries over three decades. Fisheries Research 102(1–2): 1–8.
Ratner, B.D., and E.H. Allison (2012). Wealth, rights, and resilience: An agenda for governance reform in small-scale fisheries. Development Policy
Review (30)4: 371–398.
Spalding, M., M. Kainuma, and L. Collins (2010). World Atlas of Mangroves. Washington, D.C.: Earthscan.
Costello, C., D. Ovando, R. Hilborn, S.D. Gaines, O. Deschenes, and S.E. Lester (2012). Status and solutions for the world’s unassessed fisheries. Science 27
September 2012 [Online] DOI:10.1126/science.1223389.
DFID (2012). Promoting innovation and evidence-based approaches to building resilience and responding to humanitarian crises: A DFID strategy paper.
London: Department for International Development. [Online] http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications1/prom-innov-evi-bas-appr-build-resresp-hum-cris.pdf.
4
Box 2. Fisheries, aquaculture, and food security.
From the perspective of poverty reduction, a focus on the
small-scale sector in developing countries is essential, as the
small-scale sector accounts for the vast majority of employment
in isheries and aquaculture, and over half of production.
Marine isheries alone produce up to 90 million metric tons of
high-quality protein, annually contributing to food security for
1 billion people globally. They provide full- and part-time
livelihoods for an estimated 60 million people, 97% of whom are
in developing countries. Of these, 84% are in the small-scale
sector.1 Millions more operate in the subsistence sector, often
on a seasonal basis, or have livelihoods indirectly supported by
isheries. While isheries may only be important to some for a
few months of the year, it is often during a critical period when
crop production is low and there are few alternatives for food
production or when other alternatives fail (such as in times of
drought).
There are important diferences between marine systems,
where ishing itself is the primary cause of declining stocks
globally, and freshwater systems, where external
environmental pressures are the greatest threat to
sustainability. Yet it is equally important to understand the
ways that freshwater and marine systems are interlinked in
terms of economics and trade, ecological functions, and
livelihoods. Flows of both nutrients and pollutants from river
systems, for example, afect the productivity of coastal
habitats, and harvesting wild ish to supply feed for the
aquaculture industry is often proitable yet typically a net loss
for nutritional security.
In addition to capture ishery production, the rapidly developing
marine and brackish-water aquaculture sectors produce
23 million tons annually, including shrimp, ish, and mollusks,
contributing a combined 38% of total global aquaculture
production.2 About half of the demand for food ish is now
met by aquaculture. It is the fastest-growing food production
sector in the world, growing at an average annual rate of
nearly 10% since 1970. World demand for aquatic products will
continue to rise,3 driven by stagnating production from wild
isheries and an increasingly wealthy, urbanized, and populous
world. Aquaculture production may need to double by 2030
to meet future demand. Ninety-two percent of production is
expected to come from developing countries.4
Current research and policy discourse on sustainability of
isheries, aquaculture, and food security often fail to probe
the speciic impacts on livelihoods and nutritional well-being
for poor households. Examining livelihood and nutritional
impacts requires identifying and openly deliberating on
trade-ofs among goals for food security, conservation, and
macro-economic growth, as well as synergies.5
Figure 1. Production and employment in fisheries and aquaculture.
1
2
3
4
5
World Bank, FAO, and WorldFish Center (2010). The Hidden Harvests: The Global Contribution of Capture Fisheries. Washington, D.C.: World Bank;
UNEP (2011). Towards a Green Economy.
FAO (2012). State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Hall, S., A. Delaporte, M.J. Phillips, M. Beveridge, and M. O’Keefe (2011). Blue Frontiers: Managing the Environmental Costs of Aquaculture.
Penang, Malaysia: WorldFish and Conservation International. [Online] www.worldfishcenter.org/resource_centre/media/pdfs/blue_frontiers/
report.pdf.
FAO (2011). The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Hall, S.J., R. Hilborn, N. Andrew, and E.H. Allison. Innovations in capture fisheries: An imperative for nutrition security in the developing world.
Under review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
5
2. What’s at stake?
The nutritional importance of food derived from aquatic
agricultural systems extends well beyond the populations
engaged in production, processing, and trade. Aquatic foods,
including ish, crustaceans, and mollusks, are the primary
source of animal protein for 2.6 billion people.11 A growing
body of research is showing that ish are important not only for
supply of protein but especially for essential fatty acids and
micronutrients.12 Low-cost, small species that are typically eaten
whole or ground into pastes tend to be especially rich in
micronutrients. Sustaining and improving the availability of
afordable ish products is a highly eicient route to ighting
childhood malnutrition and reducing child mortality.
The complexity of aquatic agricultural systems and the multiple
drivers of change afecting them have made these profoundly
challenging development arenas.10 Yet the role these systems play
in the lives of so many of the world’s poor rural households also
makes them profoundly important.
The character of this livelihood dependence varies greatly by
region. Asia’s mega deltas, for example, are densely populated
and support a mix of predominantly family-based farming and
ishing. The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Megna system alone supports
the livelihoods of 160 million people. In Bangladesh, 20 million
rural farm households, 40% of whom live below the poverty line
of US$1.25 per day, depend on the aquatic agricultural systems
within the river system’s loodplains. The islands of the Paciic
and East Asia support much smaller populations, but a large
portion of them are poor and depend on coastal resources for
their primary sources of income. In the Solomon Islands, for
example, 75% of the population relies on subsistence farming
and ishing, while at the macro level ishery products account for
19% of the total export revenues of the country. The Philippines
has a more diverse economy and lower rates of poverty than the
above-mentioned regions, but agriculture and isheries are
central to the economies of many poorer coastal provinces.
Where aquatic agricultural systems predominate, their
development is also central to political and social stability. In
many places, access to land, seasonal loodplains, ishing zones,
and other productive resources along the coasts is the focus of
intense competition, often with the poor and vulnerable at
signiicant disadvantage.13 Likewise, gender inequities in these
systems are at once a source of conlict, an obstacle to
development progress, and an essential key to transformation
(see Box 3).
Eating ish and rice, Bangladesh
Welcomme, R.L., I.G. Cowx, D. Coates, C. Béné, S. Funge-Smith, A. Halls, and K. Lorenzen (2010). Inland capture fisheries. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society B 365, 2881–2896; Small, C., and R.J. Nicholls (2003). A global analysis of human settlement in coastal zones. Journal of Coastal Research
19(3): 584–599.
11
Allison, E.H. (2011). Aquaculture, Fisheries, Poverty and Food Security. Penang, Malaysia: WorldFish Center. [Online] www.worldfishcenter.org/
resource_centre/WF_2971.pdf.
12
Beveridge, M.C.M., S.H. Thilsted, M.J. Phillips, M. Metian, M. Troell, and S.J. Hall (2012). Meeting the food and nutrition needs of the poor: The role of fish
and the opportunities and challenges emerging from the rise of aquaculture. Journal of Fish Biology (in review); Thilsted, S.H. (2012). The potential of
nutrient-rich small fish species in aquaculture to improve human nutrition and health. In R.P. Subasinghe, J.R. Arthur, D.M. Bartley, S.S. De Silva, M. Halwart,
N. Hishamunda, C.V. Mohan, and P. Sorgeloos, eds., Farming the Waters for People and Food, 57– 73. Proceedings of the Global Conference on
Aquaculture 2010, Phuket, Thailand. 22–25 September 2010. Rome: FAO and Bangkok: NACA.
13
Allison, E.H., B.D. Ratner, B. Åsgård, R. Willmann, R. Pomeroy, and J. Kurien (2012). Rights-based fisheries governance: From fishing rights to human rights.
Fish and Fisheries 13(1): 14–29.
10
6
Box 3. Gender equity and transformative change.
Gender inequities also block progress in ighting malnutrition. In
Bangladesh, where productivity and income increases from ish
ponds occurred at the household level, this did not necessarily
translate into nutrition gains for women and girls.5
The globalized market processes, population growth,
migration, and urbanization that rapidly change aquatic
agricultural systems are all gendered. In Bangladesh and
Cambodia, rural-urban migration, a predominantly male
phenomenon, has feminized agriculture. In the Philippines,
women predominate among rural-urban migrants, while
men remain in agricultural livelihoods, and women equal
men in pursuing overseas migration.1 In all of these
countries, women’s engagement in the agriculture
sector is generally higher than men’s but often invisible
or under-estimated in oicial statistics.
These diferences in the gender division of labor have
implications for the nature of poverty, marginalization,
and vulnerability. Women’s disproportionate sufering of
asset poverty arises from socio-cultural norms that restrict
access to, ownership of, and control over natural, physical,
and inancial resources. This is pronounced in Bangladesh,
where rural women own only 8% of all productive
assets.2 Equally signiicant, women’s involvement in
community-based aquatic resource management is
often minimal because of customary power relations and
time and mobility constraints related to domestic tasks
and maintaining a reputation for decency. However, where
poor women are granted conditions enabling them to
claim long-term rights over public water bodies, as the
formation of ish-farming groups in Bangladesh has
shown, the engagement of and beneits to women can
be sustained.3
Small-scale isheries, Tonle Sap, Cambodia
Pro-poor improvements in the productivity, proitability,
and adaptive capacities of coastal communities can only be
achieved to their full potential and sustained if they occur jointly
with changes in the social norms and attitudes that underlie
inequalities. AAS users and their development partners need to
design and test the efectiveness of innovative integrated
strategies to address both technical AAS challenges and the
social constraints impeding marginalized AAS users, and
particularly poor women, from exerting their capacities
to act individually and with others to make full use of available
resources to improve their own and their families’ well-being.
Gender-based marginalization and vulnerability translate
into highly gendered well-being outcomes as well. Women
are more vulnerable to gender-based violence than men,
both in private and in public. In Bangladesh and the Solomon
Islands, over 50% of women experience physical or sexual
violence at the hands of an intimate partner.4
1
2
3
4
5
PCW (2010). Fact Sheet: Filipino Women and Men. Manila: Philippine Commission on Women.
Quisumbing, A.R., and J.A. Maluccio (2000). Intrahousehold allocation and gender relations. FCND Discussion Paper 84. Washington, D.C.: IFPRI.
Nathan, D., and N.A. Apu (1998). Women’s independent access to productive resources: Fish ponds in the Oxbow Lakes Project, Bangladesh.
Gender Technology and Development 2(3): 397–413.
NIPORT (2009). Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey, 2007. Dhaka, Bangladesh: National Institute of Population Research and Training;
MWYCA & NSO [Ministry of Women, Youth and Children Affairs & National Statistics Office] (2009). Solomon Islands Family Health and Safety
Study. Noumea: Secretariat of the Pacific Community; World Bank (2004). Zambia: Strategic Country Gender Assessment. Lusaka: World Bank.
Kumar, N., and A.R. Quisumbing (2010). Access, Adoption and Diffusion: Understanding the Long-Term Impacts of Improved Vegetable and Fish
Technologies in Bangladesh. Washington, D.C.: IFPRI.
Excerpted from: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (2012). Gender Strategy Brief: A gender transformative approach to
research in development in aquatic agricultural systems. [Online] http://www.worldfishcenter.org/publications/gender-strategy-brief-gendertransformative-approach-research-development-aquatic-agricultural-systems.
7
simultaneously weak in places characterized by poverty traps.
In such circumstances, small adjustments at any one level—such
as building some aspect of household assets (e.g., by improving
access to education or health care), introducing new technologies,
or investing in incremental improvements in democratic
decentralization—are unlikely to move the system away from
its dominant, stable dynamic equilibrium.
3. An integrated approach
Enhancing the contribution of aquatic agricultural systems to
rural development and food security requires carefully designed
investments that address the multidimensional and strongly
gendered nature of poverty and vulnerability. In the case of many
aquatic agricultural systems, poor and disenfranchised people
living in highly productive environments produce (and often
trade) goods of high value in global markets but are unable to
climb out of poverty. They ind themselves trapped in an unfavorable
dynamic equilibrium by processes that exist simultaneously at
multiple scales and are self-reinforcing.14 A schematic diagram
of the multiple dimensions of poverty (see Box 4) provides a
simpliied view of such traps, seen from a household perspective.
Governments, markets, and community institutions are
That is why it is critical to address the broad context at multiple
scales, following a diagnosis of which parts of the trap are most
diicult to escape, and which can best respond to intervention.
Achieving these transformations at scale requires partnership
with agencies and change agents that are able to implement
innovations that inluence governance at all levels and that
improve collaboration across jurisdictions (see Box 5).
Box 4. Measuring and addressing poverty.
To identify the poor in aquatic agricultural systems and
support them with the right types of development
interventions, we must understand and take into account
the complex multiple dimensions of poverty and their
interrelationships. The igure below highlights three key
dimensions of poverty.
Income and asset poverty is when individuals and households
do not have suicient means to sustain a decent standard of
living. Standardized measures are used in economic planning
and targeting in social protection schemes, but local
development activities may use more qualitative techniques,
such as wealth ranking, to identify the poor.
To
sy
typ
m
co
th
hig
Vulnerability is the result of people’s exposure to ecological,
economic, and institutional shocks and stresses, the sensitivity
of their livelihood systems to these risks, and their capacity to
cope and adapt. Two common applications are mapping of
vulnerability to famine by the World Food Program1 and
mapping of vulnerability to climate change risks by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Marginalization sees certain groups systematically
disadvantaged because they are discriminated against on the
basis of their ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, caste,
age, education, class, disability, HIV status, migrant
omegender,
status, or where they live.2
ind
su
sta
are u
ta
Figure 1. Three key overlapping and reinforcing dimensions
loca
of poverty.
qu
1
2
3
World Food Program (2007). Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping. [Online] http://www.wfp.org/operations/vam/.
Atkinson, A.B. (1998). Social exclusion, poverty and unemployment in exclusion, employment and opportunity. A.B. Atkinson and J. Hills, eds. CASE
paper. Center for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics, London; DFID (2005). Reducing Poverty by Tackling Social Exclusion.
Development.
London: Department for International
[Online] http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/social-exclusion.pdf.
Allison, E.H., C. Béné, and N.L. Andrew (2011). Poverty reduction as a means to enhance resilience in small-scale fisheries. In R. Pomeroy and N.L.
Andrew, eds., Managing Small Scale Fisheries: Frameworks and Approaches, 216–237. CABI.
The mandate of the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic
Agricultural Systems is to confront the paradox of high
ecological productivity mingled with high prevalence of
poverty, vulnerability, and inequity among social groups. Its goal
is to transform aquatic agricultural systems to realize their full
development potential while remaining resilient as societies
and environments change. The program, launched in 2011, is
harnessing the strengths of the CGIAR in agricultural research
and combining them with the skills and capacities of community
groups, national agricultural research systems, nongovernmental
organizations, the private sector, advanced research institutes,
and other partners, to pursue an innovative, integrated program
of action research.
14
These conditions and processes, which are often strongly
gendered, overlap and may reinforce one another, so that
people who are socially excluded or marginalized may
become income and asset poor, and asset poverty reduces
capacity to adapt, making its victims more vulnerable to
external shocks and adverse trends.3
As in other integrated agricultural systems, efective engagement
with poverty and vulnerability in aquatic agricultural systems
means putting the poor and vulnerable at the core of our work.
This requires research to be rooted irmly in the development
agenda and responsive to context-speciic diferences in threats
and opportunities. The AAS approach recognizes the importance
of aquatic resources, and isheries in particular, but asserts that
sustainable management of these resources to confront rural
poverty and malnutrition requires a much more integrated
approach to research and development than has generally been
the case. While calls to emphasize poverty reduction are not new
to the international conservation community, implementation
has been dogged by lack of resources and capacity to accomplish
Barrett, C.B., and B.M. Swallow (2006). Fractal poverty traps. World Development 34(1): 1–15.
8
Box 5. Governing the coastal seascape in the Philippines.
and ecological settings.3 Indeed, the study identiied examples
of four distinct isheries governance arrangements along the
Philippine coasts,4 ranging from integrated isheries and aquatic
resource management councils, as found in San Miguel Bay, to
more loosely structured clusters and alliances of municipalities,
as found in the Visayan Sea; each approach has its particular
advantages and challenges. This kind of experimentation
represents a ‘second generation’ in small-scale isheries
co-management eforts, recognizing the centrality of navigating
power dynamics and cross-sectoral and cross-scale relationships
in the broader governance context.5
In the Philippines, small-scale isheries annually supply the
ish-food needs of over 100 million Filipinos and provide direct
employment to 1.4 million ishers.1 Yet, the productivity of
these systems and food security in rural coastal areas of the
country are put at risk by degraded ishery habitats, intensiied
resource-use competition and conlict, and post-harvest losses.
Limited capacity of state institutions, inconsistent ishery
policies, and weak institutional partnerships have stymied
eforts to restore the health of coastal isheries.
In an efort to better understand the opportunities for
improving cross-scale coastal governance, WorldFish recently
partnered with the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of
Agricultural Research to conduct assessments in eight coastal
regions. At each site, the research team conducted participatory
systems analyses to help local stakeholders identify driving
factors as the focus for future interventions. Assessing the need
for reforms through such ‘bottom-up’ analysis helps develop a
constituency for efective implementation.2
For such reforms to achieve their intended outcomes for food
security and livelihoods, however, institutional strengthening
is needed to improve collaboration in rule setting, monitoring,
and enforcement across jurisdictions. No one model of
cross-scale governance is appropriate for all socio-cultural
1
2
3
4
5
Harvesting cage culture ish
Pido, M.D., M.L. Perez, L.R. Garces, and N.D. Salayo. (in prep). Re-thinking Sustainable Development of Small-Scale Fisheries in the Philippines: Past
Initiatives, Lessons Learned and Strategic Directions.
Perez, M.L., M.D. Pido, L.R. Garces, and N.D. Salayo (2012). Towards Sustainable Development of Small-Scale Fisheries in the Philippines: Experiences
and Lessons Learned from Eight Regional Sites. Penang, Malaysia: WorldFish Center.
Ratner, B.D., B. Barman, P. Cohen, K. Mam, J. Nagoli, and E.H. Allison (2012). Strengthening governance across scales in aquatic agricultural systems.
Working Paper. Penang, Malaysia: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. [Online] http://www.worldfishcenter.org/resource_
centre/WF_3121.pdf.
Pomeroy, R., L. Garces, M. Pido, and G. Silvestre (2010). Ecosystem-based fisheries management in small-scale tropical marine fisheries: Emerging
models of governance arrangements in the Philippines. Marine Policy 34: 298–308.
Ratner, B.D., E.J.V. Oh, and R.S. Pomeroy (2012). Navigating change: Second generation challenges of small-scale fisheries management in the
Philippines and Vietnam. Journal of Environmental Management 107: 131–139.
this emphasis in much more than a token manner.15 At the same
time, the rural/agricultural development community has not been
very successful either in shifting from technology-focused to
poverty-focused approaches.
The complexity and diversity of these systems mean there can be
no single technical ix or blueprint solution to the challenges they
face.16 Our research must operate across sectors and be informed
by diagnoses of constraints and opportunities at multiple scales.
This includes the household level, where socio-cultural norms,
beliefs, and attitudes underlie the persistence of gender inequity.
Only by this multi-scale, multi-sectoral approach will we efectively
contribute to the transformational change the poor deserve.
Working with rural communities, we aim to harness their existing
strengths as we work together with partners to address challenges
identiied through an extensive participatory process involving
stakeholders at multiple levels. This process builds on earlier
participatory approaches to rural development and extends them
by a focus on community empowerment, a transformative
approach to gender, a recognition of the importance of nutrition
as a key lever for change, and a commitment to long-term
engagement, all supported by an innovative approach to
monitoring and evaluation as the basis for learning and scaling.
15
16
Pursuing this path challenges the CGIAR to move beyond
traditional circles and change the way we do much of our
research. By emphasizing approaches that call for research in
development—rather than research and development or
research for development—we are pursuing a conscious change
in emphasis and mindset.
Sayer, J.A., and B.M. Campbell (2004). The Science of Sustainable Development: Local Livelihoods and the Global Environment. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Chambers, R. (2010). Paradigms, poverty, and adaptive pluralism. IDS Working Paper 344. Sussex, UK: Institute of Development Studies.
9
To focus our approach on pathways of action that are likely to
have impact, the program builds on our analysis of key constraints
driving poverty and vulnerability in aquatic agricultural systems,
and identiies a set of six corresponding hypotheses of change to
frame our research agenda (Figure 1). These hypotheses comprise
our preliminary theory of change. This theory argues that releasing
the productive potential of aquatic agricultural systems to
beneit the poor will require resource users and their partners
in development to generate innovations in farming, natural
resource management, marketing, livelihood strategies, and
social institutions. The capacity and conidence to innovate will
be greater if people are less poor and vulnerable, better fed, and
better integrated into economic, social, and political processes.
4. A theory of change
The central hypothesis driving the program is that the CGIAR can
have greater impact on aquatic agricultural systems by moving
beyond the linear production model that has dominated much
of agricultural research to embracing a more integrated,
innovative view of how to achieve development in agricultural
systems. We are pursuing this through an action research and
partnership-driven approach that moves far beyond the persistent
views of development as either a purely technical process or as
charity. We embrace development as a human right, whose goal
is to achieve improved well-being for those currently living in
poverty and with hunger.
By focusing on the needs of farmers, ishers, local government
oicials, NGO workers, marginalized ethnic groups, and women,
we work to provide them with greater opportunities to innovate,
thereby improving their means and incentives to increase
agricultural productivity, sustain natural resources, access markets
for goods and labor, and realize their rights and freedoms.
Building the relationships, structure, capital, capabilities, and
freedoms to allow this innovation system to lourish are the key
development activities of the program.
Our hypotheses suggest that productivity gains, improved natural
resource management, improved access to markets, transformed
gender relations, improved policies, impact at scale, and lourishing
knowledge exchange and innovation systems will collectively
efect signiicant poverty reductions in aquatic agricultural
systems. By pursuing actions that address these hypotheses
and achieve the corresponding program objectives, we will
realize outcomes and impacts on the three dimensions of poverty
through income and asset building; social, political, and economic
rights; and resilience and adaptive capacity.
Constraints
Objectives and Hypotheses of Change
Unrealized potential for
improved productivity of AAS.
Increased beneits from sustainable
increases in productivity:
Productivity gains through improved
technology & natural resource management
in AAS farming systems can beneit the poor.
Missing or poorly functioning
markets limit potential for
acquiring inputs or selling
farm surplus.
AAS systems are frequently
in risky environments and
degraded.
Gender disparities limit the
productivity and sustainability
of AAS and harm the
well-being of poor and
vulnerable households.
Increased beneits from improved and
equitable access to markets:
Productivity gains will yield sustained beneits
only if producers and others are able to
access markets equitably.
Income and
Asset Poverty
Vulnerability
Marginalization
Strengthened resilience & adaptive
capacity:
Building the adaptive capacity of people in
AAS will reduce asset losses from shocks and
adverse trends.
Reduced gender disparities in access to and
control of resources and decision making:
Greater access to and control of resources
and decision making empower women,
improving their productivity and well-being.
Households in AAS are
frequently poor, culturally and
economically marginalized,
and ill served by policy.
Local successes rarely
translate to impact at wider
scales.
Improved policies and institutions to
empower AAS users:
Strengthening rights of marginalized people
will reduce inequality and poverty in AAS.
Expanded beneits to the poor in AAS
through scaling up:
A scaling-up strategy combining expansion,
replication, and collaboration can engage
partners to invest in difusing AAS technologies
and principles.
Figure 1. Theory of change for the program.
10
However, the relative importance of these processes in any given
context can be determined only through careful diagnosis, and
some contexts may not require addressing all of them. Diagnosis
and sequenced interventions are therefore critical underlying
principles of this program, as they are in much contemporary
development practice at both micro and macro scales.17 We will
focus in each location on the appropriate combination of research
activities that best addresses the key constraints and opportunities
faced by local households. In some, the primary focus will be on
developing new technologies and attracting private investment
to better harness the productive potential of the aquatic
agricultural systems (see Box 6), while in others the focus may be
on strengthened community participation in decision making as a
means to assert rights and reduce exposure to risk (see Box 7).
Box 6. Leveraging private investment in small aquaculture
enterprises.
support to transition or ‘incubate’ promising SME aquaculture
investments, combined with connections to inance,
technology, and market partners provide a basis for scalable
commercial investment.
Large-scale commercial aquaculture already attracts substantial
investment, but there is a need to catalyze investments in
strategies that address environmental impacts and enable
equitable access to markets by small producers in order to
enhance local livelihoods and build food security. WorldFish,
with various partners, has been exploring new investment
models and partnerships for small and medium enterprises
(SMEs),1 which make up the majority of aquaculture producers
in developing countries but are often marginalized in accessing
the technology, inancing, and markets needed to improve and
grow.
For poverty reduction and food security, the sector has massive
investment potential with excellent rates of return. In certain
cases, internal rates of return of 20–30% over ten years are
achievable in well-managed projects and companies.3 A recent
study of aquaculture SMEs carried out in Ogun State, Nigeria,
for example, shows a positive impact of microinance loans on
small- and medium-scale aquaculture, as it increased overall
production, improved the revenue of the farmers, mitigated
rural-urban migration, and generated new employment
opportunities.4 Many aquaculture activities are performed by
women, particularly in small-scale operations. Pro-poor
aquaculture development may therefore also contribute to
women’s empowerment by enabling supplementary income
and opening other opportunities for asset-building.5
WorldFish research has shown that investments in small
aquaculture enterprises can be commercially rewarding for
investors and at the same time generate positive environmental
outcomes and social beneits. SMEs create income, employment,
and signiicant social and economic multiplier efects in
developing countries; investments in aquaculture SMEs
therefore ofer scope for delivering sustainable sources of ish,
while positively impacting communities.2
Lack of access to inance and funding mechanisms remains a
key inhibitor for many aquaculture SMEs to grow and improve
practices, so partnerships with private investors remain key to
achieving impact at scale. While a sound business case should
be at the core of any investment, WorldFish research identiies
a potential role for patient, socially responsible (impact)
investors during startup and growth phases.
Often, for example, credit needs to be paired with eforts to
assess and support management capacity, loan repayment
terms need to be adjusted to match the period during which
small operators are able to achieve a return on investment,
and targeted support is required to enable SMEs to meet
certiication and quality requirements for high-value export
markets. Engaging with SMEs and communities in developing
countries presents challenges for investors, but capacity
building, business development skills, and organizational
1
2
3
4
5
17
Small-scale aquaculture in Cameroon
.M .
Phillips, M., M. Beveridge, F. Weirowski, W. Rogers, and A. Padiyar (2011). Financing Smallholder Aquaculture Enterprises. [Online] www.worldfish
center.org/resource_centre/WF_2798.pdf.
Phillips, M., W. Rogers, W. Downing, M.C.M. Beveridge, P.A. Padiyar, M. Karim, and R. Subasinghe (2012). Inclusive aquaculture: Business at the
bottom of the aquatic pyramid. FAO Aquaculture Newsletter 48: 44–46.
Aquasol (2012). Aquaculture Investment Advisory Services. [Online] http://www.fishfarming.com/services/aquaculture-investment-advisory
-services.html.
Odebiyi, O., and O. Olaoye (2012). Small and medium scale aquaculture enterprises development in Ogun State, Nigeria: The role of microfinance
banks. Libyan Agriculture Research Center Journal International 3(1): 1–6.
Thompson, B., and R. Subasinghe (2011). Aquaculture’s Role in Improving Food and Nutrition Security. In B. Thompson and L. Amoroso, eds.,
Combating Micronutrient Deficiences: Food-Based Approaches, 150-162. CABI.
Rodrik, D. (2006). Goodbye Washington consensus, hello Washington confusion? A review of the World Bank’s economic growth strategy in the 1990s:
Learning from a decade of reform. Journal of Economic Literature 54: 973–987; Ostrom, E. (2007). A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, 15181–15187; Collier, P. (2008). The Bottom Billion. New York: Oxford University Press.
11
Box 7. Multi-stakeholder planning in Khulna, Bangladesh.
Workshop participants agreed that transformational change
in local livelihoods could not be achieved without addressing
gender inequalities and concentration of decision-making
power in the hands of local elite, who restrict access to markets.
Participants asserted that prior development investments have
rarely encouraged local leadership and action, instead fostering
a culture of dependency. This means that building local capacity
for collective action is a critical element in the development
agenda. This has been shown, for example, to enable technology
adoption and asset accumulation by women farmers.1 They
also identiied a need for research to speed innovation in
farming systems to increase productivity, reduce vulnerability
to climate change, and help remove obstacles to market access.
The south and southwest coasts of Bangladesh are among the
most disaster-prone areas of the country, having experienced
two major cyclones in the past 3 years. For the more than
8 million people living in these coastal loodplains, capture
isheries and aquaculture are the second highest source
of income.
The Khulna area in southern Bangladesh, one of the irst focal
hubs of the AAS program, is challenged not only by exposure
Figureweather
1. Khulna
Hub
development
to extreme
variation
but also
by declines in challenge.
biodiversity
and other ecosystem services, poor access to markets and
information, and high incidence of poverty, malnutrition, and
childhood stunting. In July 2012, a participatory stakeholder
consultation workshop convened stakeholders from various
sectors to help articulate an overall picture of the development
challenge for the hub (Figure 1). This consultation is part of
the diagnosis stage in participatory planning, which precedes
detailed program design in each of the hubs.
Transformational
Change
ties
ng
We seek positive transformational change
o
in the lives and livelihoods of poor
AAS-dependent farmers and their nts
communities, particularly women and
youth.
d
A Culture of
We strive for empowered communities
Local Innovation that lead in the innovation and adoption
and Learning
of more productive, diversiied, and
resilient practices and technologies and
demand a more equitable role in the
management of natural resources.
Productivity
and Adaptation
his
or
With this enhanced capacity and leadership
t in
Khulna hub stakeholder consultation
h b
they will make more productive use of
water, land, and biodiversity resources,
gain better access to information and
markets, and continually adapt to a
dynamic Khulna loodplain system.
Figure 1. Khulna Hub development challenge.
1
Kumar, N., and A.R. Quisumbing (2011). Does social capital build women’s assets? The long-term impacts of group-based and individual
dissemination of agricultural technology in Bangladesh. CAPRi Working Paper 97. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute.
[Online] http://www.capri.cgiar.org/wp/capriwp97.asp.
coastal-marine, and freshwater systems respectively, we also aim
to maximize opportunities for exchange across countries and
regions.
5. Commitment to place, solutions at scale
By embedding our research in communities, enlisting beneiciary
households as co-researchers, and working closely with
development partners, the CGIAR is seeking not only to develop
solutions to speciic constraints currently felt by stakeholders,
but also to initiate and support processes that can help transform
these communities and the institutions that afect them, beyond
the lifespan of individual projects.
In each focal country, we work in a limited number of development
hubs where aquatic agricultural systems are central to prospects
for poverty reduction. Case study data show that the vast majority
of households in these areas are dependent for their livelihoods
on natural resources, including ish, crops, and livestock, and
the ecosystem services that support these production systems.
In most cases, ish represent the irst or second most important
source of household income.
The program is doing this by concentrating eforts on focal
countries within three major aquatic agricultural systems: large
Asian deltas (Bangladesh and Cambodia, extending subsequently
to India and Vietnam), the Asia-Paciic islands of the Coral Triangle
(the Philippines and the Solomon Islands, extending subsequently
to Indonesia and the South Paciic), and African freshwater
systems (Zambia, extending subsequently to Mali and Uganda).
These are illustrated in Figure 2. The selection criteria for country
focus include national dependence on aquatic agricultural
systems (extent of aquatic agricultural systems, as well as their
importance to the national economy and to the livelihoods of
poor families), level of government commitment, quality of
partnerships, and opportunities for scaling out. By selecting
focal countries that exemplify the challenges in mega-delta,
These hubs provide a focus for innovation, learning, and impact
through action research. In each hub we work with partners to
identify communities and sites as the focus of our direct research
investment. At each of these sites, we are conducting participatory
diagnoses with selected communities and households, and our
work will build upon this research to provide a basis for long-term
learning with the communities in the area. We will develop
learning alliances with all key stakeholders in the hubs and
use participatory impact mapping to guide our investments
in partnerships, capacity building, and knowledge management
and learning.
12
The program is designed to focus operations in focal countries
and hubs within them, and to build on this research to harness
global learning in the form of international public goods. In each
country and hub, we will identify commonalities and diferences
in the constraints faced and in the solutions to these constraints,
and distill a body of comparative learning and general principles.
We will then work with partners to see these lessons applied in
guiding development interventions elsewhere in focal countries,
and indeed in other agricultural systems with similar challenges
(see Box 8).
The program’s work in each hub builds on past and ongoing
research and development activities. This involves bringing
together learning from current CGIAR research projects and
those of partners, as well as using the participatory diagnoses
to identify how we can build upon them to improve integration
and increase impact in the future. By working closely with
development actors, notably local organizations, development
NGOs, and governments, the program will build close links with
ongoing and planned development investment. It will also invest
in rigorous impact assessment, building on state-of-the-art
practice to establish causal relationships between interventions
and impacts in complex and dynamic systems.18 In these ways,
the program seeks to scale out the results of our work to reach
beyond the communities we work with directly.
Figure 2. Current focal regions for the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems.19
18
19
Stern, E., N. Stame, J. Mayne, K. Forss, R. Davies, and B. Befani (2012). Broadening the range of designs and methods for impact evaluations. DFID Working
Paper 38. London: Department for International Development. [Online] http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/pdf/outputs/misc_infocomm/DFIDWorkingPaper38.pdf.
Population estimates employed case study data on levels of dependence on aquatic agricultural systems to interpret population distribution data within
countries. Additional information on population estimates and characterization of the distinct challenges in each system may be found in the CGIAR
Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. [Online] http://www.worldfishcenter.org/resource_centre/WF_2936.pdf.
13
Box 8. Participatory resilience assessments in the Solomon
Islands.
status is unknown (?). It speciies monitoring at a resolution
that is appropriate for community-based systems and can feed
directly into the learning processes.
The Solomon Islands consists largely of coastal and aquatic
ecosystems, with aquatic agricultural systems dominating the
rural economy. Rural communities have identiied increasing
population, widespread poverty, sea level rise, climate change,
diminishing marine resources, disease, and outsiders as key
threats to their future livelihoods.
These tools were used to develop a management plan for the
bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) ishery in the village of Kia,
Santa Isabel Island. The diagnosis recognized that cash from
the bêche-de-mer ishery had caused villagers to abandon
their vegetable gardens in favor of purchasing food. When the
government enforced the closure of the ishery in response to
resource depletion, the lack of functional gardens compounded
the impact of reduced income on households. A management
intervention promoting garden cultivation and an indicator
based on the number of productive gardens in the village
were included in the management plan. At the instigation of
villagers, this management plan was later expanded to cover
all marine resources, showing the community’s strong buy-in
and ownership of the plan. In another application in the Jorio
region of Vella Lavella Island, ive communities used the tools
in developing a marine resource management plan that
addresses illegal ishing, as well as conservation of mangrove
and reefs, monitoring of indicator species, and in some
instances, forest and land management.3
What does resilience mean in this context? A resilient ishery
socioeconomic system in the developing world is one that
absorbs shocks and reorganizes itself following stresses and
disturbances while still delivering beneits for poverty reduction,
responding to priorities that are locally deined.1 In the data-poor
context of aquatic agricultural systems in developing countries,
it is critical that methods for assessing and pursuing resilience
abandon the heavy data requirements that characterize
classical natural resource management and look instead for
ways to feed existing, often local, knowledge into management
systems that are primed to learn.2
WorldFish has developed a set of diagnostic tools to facilitate
locally grounded resilience assessment and resource
management. The indicator dashboard (Figure 1) provides a
simple visual aid for moving from community-based diagnosis
to development of management indicators based on the
ability of the system to meet community needs. In this
simplest form, management performance is judged by
whether each indicator improved (↑), worsened (↓), or
remained about the same as last time it was assessed (≈). If
no further information has been collected, then the current
A key feature of the AAS program approach is to enable the
rapid spread of such innovations. In the case of the Solomons,
individual communities, language groups, and provincial
governments provide natural nodes in a multi-scale network.
Innovation spreads quickly among communities and ‘wontoks’
(people who share language), but new ways of spreading
impact will be required to jump the barriers of language and
remoteness, and do so at minimal cost.
Indicator
Variable
States / Thresholds
Abundance of sea cucumbers
# of animals seen on
100m transect
1. > 100 animals / 100 m transect
2. 40 - 100 animals / transect
3. < 40 animals / transect
Reliance on sea cucumber for
income
% of isher households
deriving primary income
from the ishery
1. < 40% of households
2. 40 - 70% of households
3. 70 - 100% of households
Cultivation of gardens for
subsistence
# of gardens cultivated
1. One new garden per family per year
2. Maintenance of old garden
3. No garden cultivated
High school attendance
# of students sent back to 1. No students sent back
community due to lack of 2. 1-3 students sent back
school fees
3. > 3 students sent back
Figure 1. Indicator dashboard for community-level resilience monitoring, example from Kia Village, Solomon Islands.
1
2
3
Andrew, N.L., and L. Evans (2011). Approaches and frameworks for management and research in small-scale fisheries. In R.S. Pomeroy and
N.L. Andrew, eds., Small-Scale Fisheries Management: Frameworks and Approaches for the Developing World. Oxfordshire, UK: CABI.
Walker, B., J. Sayer, N.L. Andrew, and B. Campbell (2010). Should enhanced resilience be an objective of natural resource management for
developing countries? Crop Science 50: S-10–S-19.
Govan, H. (2011). Good Coastal Management Practices in the Pacific: Experiences from the Field. Apia, Samoa: Secretariat of the Pacific Regional
Environment Program.
14
and postharvest practices. Existing and newly developed
enhancements may be superior crops, livestock, trees, or ish;
integrated management to improve quality, yield, or production
eiciency; the timely provision of production inputs; or reduced
postharvest losses. Work in this theme aims to increase beneits
to AAS-dependent households from environmentally sustainable
increases in productivity.
6. Objectives and impact pathways
The AAS program aims to improve the lives of 15 million poor and
vulnerable users of aquatic agricultural systems by 2016. With the
dissemination of new technology and knowledge to other aquatic
agricultural systems, the goal is to beneit 50 million people by 2022.20
Poverty in aquatic agricultural systems is not simply about
inadequate income or assets, but results from the interaction
between income poverty and other factors, such as marginalization
and vulnerability. Figure 3 illustrates these— often highly
gendered—interactions and shows how the program’s approach
to understanding them helps identify research priorities. In
contrast to much previous CGIAR research that focused mainly
on ways to improve income and assets directly, the program’s
multi-dimensional approach to poverty is yielding stakeholder
analyses of the wider constraints faced by the poor and of the
pathways to overcoming these constraints. The six broad
constraints and corresponding research priorities as initially
identiied are as follows:
2. Equitable access to markets.
Many AAS households do not pursue opportunities to increase
crop, livestock, and ish production because of barriers to
accessing markets. The program is working to understand these
barriers in the focal hubs and identify investments that can
overcome them. In pursuing this work the program will, wherever
possible, focus on the nutritional quality of the products and
how value chains can best deliver positive nutritional outcomes,
particularly for women, children, and other vulnerable groups.
Outcomes of this research will include adoption of value-adding
technologies and practices, private and public investment in
value chains, creation or strengthening of producer and
marketing organizations, and improved credit and business
development services available to poor and vulnerable AAS
households.
1. Sustainable increases in system productivity.
Many AAS-dependent households sufer productivity gaps. These
could be narrowed with better inputs and innovative production
Objectives and Action Research Activities
Theme 1: Increased beneits from sustainable increases in productivity
• Agricultural technology transfer
• Livelihood diversiication and enterprise development
• Natural resource management
Theme 2: Increased beneits from improved and equitable access to markets
• Value chain upgrading
• Education & skills for women and men
• Loans and savings; improved market information
• Infrastructure development; income & asset building
Theme 3: Strengthened resilience & adaptive capacity
• Climate change adaptation
• Improved health services; insurance and savings
• Social protection schemes
• Disaster preparedness and response planning
Theme 4: Reduced gender disparities in access to and control of resources and
decision making
• Gender mainstreaming in policy
• Gender equity awareness and training for men and women
• Gender equitable decision making at household and public levels
• Mobilizing women’s groups for social change
Theme 5: Improved policies and institutions to empower AAS users
• Land tenure & aquatic property rights reform
• Local government accountability
• Judicial system strengthening
• Human rights: Gender, Decent Work, Migrants, Children, Indigenous people
Income and
Asset Building
Resilience and
Adaptive
Capacity
Social, Political
and Economic
Rights
Outcomes and Impact
Theme 6: Expanded beneits to the poor in AAS through scaling up
• Holistic and participatory problem diagnosis
• Identiication and involvement of leaders and stakeholders
• Consensual and joint implementation, mutual learning, M&E
Figure 3. Program objectives, action research activities, and their impacts on drivers of poverty.
Note: The activities indicated do not map directly onto individual dimensions of poverty reduction, because these overlap. For example, to reduce the
vulnerability of landless AAS users, it may be necessary to adopt new livelihood activities, such as small-cage aquaculture and floating gardens, to
supplement and reduce pressure on wild common pool resources (Theme 1). This may entail developing new markets (Theme 2), investing in reducing
disaster risk and early warning systems that reach mobile and itinerant populations (Theme 3), addressing gender inequity through gender-awareness
activities and gender mainstreaming (Theme 4), and ensuring that the landless poor are not exploited in labor markets by promoting the application of the
human right to decent work (Theme 5). Thus, vulnerability reduction activities are not confined to Theme 3.
20
These five-year and ten-year targets are built up from country-level estimates of numbers of poor and vulnerable AAS users reached through current
and anticipated program activities, comprising both direct implementation by program partners and impacts from adoption of lessons and strategies by
other actors. Targets will be refined as detailed implementations are developed in each country during 2012–13, along with intermediate development
outcomes. A comprehensive monitoring and evaluation strategy will track progress.
15
without supporting institutions and favorable policies. The
program examines how institutions and policies afect aquatic
agricultural systems and their users, encourages the emergence
and implementation of policies and institutional innovations that
facilitate resilience in aquatic agricultural systems and their
communities, and supports AAS communities’ adaptation to
unfavorable policies that cannot be changed.
3. Socio-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity.
AAS users are vulnerable to natural disasters exacerbated by
climate change, and many sufer oppression and discrimination.
Insecurity born of vulnerability and marginalization dampens
innovation and the responsible stewardship of resources for
the long term. By helping strengthen rights that foster more
equitable access to resources and services and enhancing
capacity to adapt to irreducible risks, the program works to
build resilience.
6. Knowledge sharing, learning, and innovation.
This theme supports other themes’ delivery of outcomes by
catalyzing knowledge sharing and learning among partners and
stakeholders. It advances the program strategy for scaling up by
strengthening networks among partners for knowledge sharing,
capacity building, and advocacy. Program monitoring, evaluation,
and impact assessment strengthen the performance of program
participants toward achieving greater outcomes and expanding
the beneits to the poor in aquatic agricultural systems.
4. Gender equity.
Recognizing that gender disparities hamper communities’ ability to
harness the beneits of aquatic agricultural systems, the program
pursues a dual strategy of mainstreaming gender in all research
themes and focusing on research toward fundamentally
transforming underlying gender norms and roles. In this way, the
program supports eforts to strengthen women’s roles and status
in the home and beyond and improve women’s equity of access
to productive resources, such as land, water, technology, inancing,
and services.
Figure 4, below, provides an illustrative example of an impact
pathway for action research on the gender equity theme. Speciic
action priorities in particular hubs will trace selected routes
among the interventions, outcomes, and intended impacts
summarized here.
5. Policies and institutions to empower AAS users.
Improved technologies in the ield rarely ofer long-term beneits
Research Outputs
Outcomes
Impacts
Improved
range &
quality of life
choices
Changes in
gender
roles/norms
Improved
decisionmaking
power
Reduced
gender gaps
in access to
assets
Gender and
development
analysis, methods,
and tools focused
on AAS
development
challenges
Analysis, tools,
and methods used
to design and
implement
gender
transformative
RinD strategies
and interventions
in AAS
Enhanced
engagement
in markets
Improved
capacity &
skills
Enhanced
benefits from
effective use
of assets
Improved
adaptive
capacity &
risk mgmt
Improved
resilience
Reduced
gender gap in
incomes
Improved
education &
health
Improved
diet quality,
quantity,
diversity
Reduced
poverty
Increased
food
security
Improved
nutrition
Improved
participation
and
leadership
Sustainable
NRM
Enabling
policies
Gender
equitable
systems &
structures
Figure 4. Impact pathway for gender transformative action research.
16
7. Opportunities for partnership
The AAS program represents a long-term commitment to
transformative change aimed at reducing poverty, strengthening
livelihood resilience, and increasing food security in very
challenging development environments. Still in its formative
phase, the program welcomes new partnerships to deliver results
in the focal countries and hubs, as well as to scale out impacts
more broadly. With a strong focus on learning, distilling, and
communicating lessons, we are actively fostering opportunities to
exchange experience at country, regional, and global levels. These
are challenges that no single organization can address alone.
Fishermen in Bangladesh pool their strength to lift a boat
17
This publication should be cited as: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (2012). Resilient livelihoods and food security
in coastal aquatic agricultural systems: Investing in transformational change. CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems,
Penang, Malaysia. Project Report: AAS-2012-28.
The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems is a multi-year research initiative launched in July 2011. It is designed to pursue
community-based approaches to agricultural research and development that target the poorest and most vulnerable rural households in
aquatic agricultural systems. Led by WorldFish, a member of the CGIAR Consortium, the program is partnering with diverse organizations
working at local, national, and global levels to help achieve impacts at scale. For more information, visit aas.cgiar.org.
Design and layout: Eight Seconds Sdn Bhd.
Printed on 100% recycled paper.
Photo credits: Front cover, Finn Thilsted; page 4, David Mills; page 6 ,WorldFish; page 7, Dominyk Lever; page 9, Westly R. Rosario; page 11,
J.M. Abo’o Medjo; page 12, WorldFish; page 17, Finn Thilsted; back cover, Mike Lusmore.
© 2012. WorldFish. All rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced without the permission of, but with acknowledgment to, WorldFish.
Contact Details:
CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems
Jalan Batu Maung, Batu Maung, 11960 Bayan Lepas, Penang, MALAYSIA
Tel: +604 626 1606, fax: +604 626 5530, email: aas@cgiar.org