Background

The Bay of Bengal has been identified as one of the world’s sixty-four Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs).Located in the monsoon belt, it is bounded by eight countries (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia,Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand). The southern part of the Bay merges into the Indian Ocean.About one-quarter of the world’s population resides in the littoral countries of the Bay of Bengal, withapproximately 400 million living in the Bay’s catchment area, many subsisting at or below the poverty level.An average of 65% of the region’s urban population lives in large coastal cities and migration towards the coastal regions is increasing.

The Bay of Bengal receives large inflows of freshwater and sediment from rivers whose discharges heavily influence the dynamics of the ecosystem, particularly the coastal surface waters in the north of the Bay. The coastal and offshore waters of the region support numerous fisheries of great socio-economic importance to the countries bordering the Bay and provide for direct employment of over 2 million fishermen. Among the most important of these are inshore small pelagics, demersal and shrimp fisheries and offshore tuna.

The assimilative capacity of the Bay of Bengal is unknown and current anthropogenic impacts on the quality of coastal waters of countries are thought to be still mainly local. However, increasing evidence suggests that certain activities are causing serious local and cumulative environmental degradation that threatens the sustainable management and health of the BOBLME as a whole. Continuation of such activities, together with on-going overexploitation of marine resources, could pose serious problems for the future health and food security of millions of people in coastal communities who depend on these resources for their livelihood. These problems include:

• Pollution from land-based sources, especially in the near-shore environment where fish spawning and nursery areas, coral reefs, mangroves and the trophic structure of ecosystems are being threatened by industrial waste, toxic chemicals and eutrophication. Pollution of coastal waters by raw sewage and industrial discharges causes public health problems and contamination of marine products during post-harvesting operations.

• Sea-based sources of pollution by, e.g., oil spills from tanker traffic and fishing vessels, and from oil exploration and production, also threaten living marine resources and habitats.

• Critically important areas of biological diversity, fish spawning and nursery areas, coral reefs, mangroves and estuaries in the Bay of Bengal are under increasing stress due to habitat loss and degradation with certain species being already or becoming endangered. Concentration of shrimp aquaculture farms in certain coastal areas has raised environmental concerns for estuarine and coastal habitats and other user groups.

• The mining of coral and sand for use as construction material is also an environmentally unsustainable activity in the coastal zone of several countries.

• There is an alarming increase in cyanide fishing in the coral reefs of the region for the lucrative live food fish markets whose supply by these and other destructive methods threaten these resources and the fragile ecosystems on which they depend.

• Many of the Bay’s fishery resources are heavily exploited due to unregulated fishing activities, open access, unauthorized incursions by foreign fleets and the encroachment of nationals into the territorial waters of their neighbors. This is further complicated by poor national resource management strategies, conflicts between artisanal and large-scale fishermen, unaddressed transboundary environmental issues and insufficient knowledge and data on the functioning of the ecosystem as a whole.

The BOBLME Programme

Recognising the need for integrated and co-ordinated management of their coastal and near-shore living marine resources, the eight countries bordering the Bay of Bengal supported the development and submission by FAO to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) under the International Waters portfolio of a proposal for a project to pursue an LME approach. The GEF approved a PDF Block B grant to develop the BOBLME Programme with the World Bank as Implementing Agency and FAO as Executing Agency. The Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) also strongly endorsed the BOBLME Programme and allocated substantial funds to support the development phase. Co-funding and in-kind contributions are offered by governments of the countries and by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The PDF Block B development phase is now operational. In this first phase, the national and regional coordinating mechanisms will be put in place to ensure broad-based participation in the development of the Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA) and Strategic Action Plan (SAP). The BOBLME Programme will ultimately provide a comprehensive framework for and identify the specific actions required to address the priority transboundary problems. Potential national and regional investment, technical assistance and capacity-building interventions will be identified to improve the management of the living marine resources, with an initial focus on fisheries, and of the health of the BOBLME as a whole for the continued sustainable use of the Bay by future generations.

The BOBLME Programme’s (PDF Block B Phase) main components are:

a) The establishment of national and regional co-ordination mechanisms.

b) The synthesis and assessment of existing information on the status of living marine resources in general,and fisheries in particular, and of the environment in the BOBLME, identification of transboundary issues that threaten these resources and the health of the ecosystem, and recommendations to address and mitigate these problems through co-ordinated action.

c) Regional and national workshops involving a wide range of stakeholders to identify, discuss and reach consensus on transboundary (marine) water-related issues, constraints and priorities to be addressed.

d) Preparation of a Draft Project Brief, to be submitted for financing by the GEF and other donors in the second phase, outlining the process agreed by the countries for undertaking a TDA leading to the development of a SAP.