1. Living aquatic resources play a fundamental role in sustaining the livelihoods of many of the rural poor in Asia; providing crucial buffers to shock, food security and opportunities for diverse and flexible forms of income generation.
2. In many cases, the poorer people are the more dependent they are on aquatic resources, particularly low value fish and non-fish aquatic resources.
3. Women often play important roles in aquatic resource use and management, and aquaculture interventions may have particular benefits for women.
4. Small-scale aquaculture and aquatic resource management hold considerable potential to contribute to poverty alleviation. In order to realise this potential, poverty alleviation should be taken as the strategic starting point for aquaculture interventions. This has significant implications for how interventions are conceptualised, planned and executed, and the institutional arrangements and partnerships.
5. As with any production-based intervention, the poorest groups face significant constraints to entry into aquaculture. Opportunities do exist to overcome these constraints, and in many contexts, aquaculture offers opportunities for livelihood benefits that other sectors do not offer.
6. Distinctions between aquaculture and the management of living aquatic resources can be misleading by undermining the flexible and often complex relationships between different types of aquatic resources in the livelihoods of the rural poor.
Young shrimp fry collector - Sundarbans.
Photo: G. Grepin.
7. Aquaculture technologies appropriate for poor people are now largely in place. The greater emphasis is on more effective extension of low-cost technologies, appropriate management practices to poor people and securing rights of access to and control over aquatic resources, rather than technical research.
8. Understanding the context of poor people's livelihoods is essential. Effective poverty alleviation requires assessment of poor people's needs and identification of opportunities that allow for entry by poor people into aquaculture production and related activities. This in turn requires more sophisticated yet workable understandings of poor people's livelihoods, the causes and characteristics of poverty, and the socio-economic worlds in which poor people operate. A prerequisite for this approach is greater participation by poor people.
9. Poor people's livelihoods often depend on a range of resources and livelihood activities, of which aquaculture may be an important component. In these cases, aquaculture needs to fit with and complement other activities, rather than attempt to replace such activities.
10. Effective management of small-scale fisheries (including rice-fields, backwater swamps, and irrigation canals) by local resource users holds considerable potential for poor people. Small-scale aquaculture is often an important component of management of wild fisheries.
11. Placing poverty alleviation first requires innovative institutional arrangements and partnerships between governments, NGOs, civil society groups, poor people and donors.
12. Fisheries institutions are traditionally oriented to technical issues, and face serious budget and personnel constraints. They often have limited experience in training and extension methods appropriate for poor people. It is important to create new learning opportunities for these institutions so that they are able to provide more appropriate services to poor people. It is also important that the skills required to do so are valued and respected within the institutions.
