ANNEXES

Annex I Workshop programme

Annex I-1
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

I. Governments

II. Agencies/Organisations/Institutions

III. TCP Team

IV. Resource Persons

V. FAO

VI. NACA Secretariat

Annex I-2
SPEECH

Dr. Banchong Tiensongrusmee
Co-ordinator, NACA

Dr. Plodprasop Suraswadi, Mr Imre Csavas, fellow participants, my friends, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the NACA organisation, I am very happy to welcome you to this regional workshop.

I would like to thank the Government of Thailand for its continuing support of NACA and for hosting this regional study including this workshop. I wish to express NACA's gratitude to FAO for responding rapidly to the recommendation of the NACA governments for a regional study on aquaculture and the environment, that response coming in the form of this TCP project. The hardworking Project Team, composed of Mr Wijkstrom, Dr. Phillips and Mrs Van Houtte, were engaged throughout this Project and they have done an outstanding job at overseeing and conducting the study in collaboration with the National Environment Co-ordinators and other officers of governments. I am most grateful to FAO RAPA for the assistance that it has readily given to NACA in the conduct of the study and in the arrangements for this culminating activity. I am very pleased to welcome the representatives of the various agencies and organisations; I hope that during the workshop we can identify concrete and meaningful co-operation between your agencies and the governments in the area of environment and aquaculture development.

The ready assistance of the resource persons whom we have invited to share their expertise and experiences and the generosity of their respective institutions in allowing or enabling them to contribute to this activity, is gratefully acknowledged.

I extend my special acknowledgement to our distinguished delegates from governments, who have devoted their time and intellectual and physical resources -- in the spirit of regional collaboration -- to the highly cost-effective conduct of this project. In this extensive study, the National Environment Coordinators carried out the essential work. To them is owed a large measure of the success of this study and I would like to thank them for having been very patient with the NACA Secretariat, but more so for their ready and sincere co-operation.

This study, the Environmental Assessment and Management of Aquaculture Development, is one of the proposed activities under NACA's Regional Programme of Environment and Aquaculture Development. The Regional Programme provides a holistic approach to developing and managing the aquaculture sector, encompassing the bio-technical, economic, social and the environmental aspects. It was evolved from various forums that included workshops, consultations and studies even while NACA was still a UNDP/FAO project. The Governing Council endorsed the programme in 1991 and has since become the umbrella to the various regional and national activities of NACA. In this connection, I am pleased to inform our colleagues from governments that the Programme has gathered considerable momentum over the past two years and is now comprised of more projects -- approved and in the pipeline -- that are being implemented in collaboration with a number of organisations.

Notable among these activities are this Regional Study on Environmental Assessment and Management of Aquaculture; the NACA-ADB Regional Project on Aquaculture Sustainability and the Environment, scheduled to be activated in April 1994; the Regional Study on the Taxonomy, Ecology and Analysis of Commercially Important Red Seaweeds, which is on-going; a collaborative programme with the Paris-based Office International des Epizooties (OIE) on regional fish health management for which a working group will meet, also in Bangkok, next Monday. The working group will develop the proposal and programme of work on two regional activities related to fish health management, namely, Fish Disease Information Systems and Fish Disease Legislation.

The national-level activities include: a two-phase investigation of the environmental impact of shrimp farming in Thailand, which is generally seen as having important lessons of regional significance: the pipeline studies on shrimp aquaculture in tropical coastal regions planned for Thailand and Vietnam; and another national-level study in Thailand aimed at finding ways to rehabilitate abandoned aquaculture areas. Finally, a national workshop on aquaculture and the environment in Vietnam will be held in May. The Government has asked NACA to assist in its organisation and will involve the participation of resource persons from FAO RAPA, Mekong Secretariat, Save the Children Fund, a Vietnam-based European Council project, and other agencies.

These, at present, constitute the on-going and planned activities under the Regional Programme for Environment and Aquaculture Development. To underscore the urgency and need for more efforts in line with the Regional Programme, the NACA Governments at their Fifth Governing Council Meeting in Delhi last December, unanimously endorsed a key proposal for a regional project on environment and aquaculture development following the programmatic approach that the UNDP had prescribed. This key project would become the linchpin for the others which are now on-going or on-stream. The reasons given for its urgency are many. In sum, the Governments were greatly disturbed by the lack of understanding on the impacts of aquaculture, the pitfalls of formulating policies and approving development projects without adequate understanding of their effects and the headlong rush into aquaculture expansion for short-term economic gains that cannot be sustained. The lack of a holistic approach to the planning for national aquaculture development was the common thread.

I am happy to report to this gathering that following their endorsement of this project and of other activities, the Governments expressed their resolve to support its implementation to the fullest. They will do so through the mechanism of technical co-operation among developing countries. This mechanism and the cohesiveness of the governments, fostered by the timely and essential support of organisations that have found it worthy to partner the Governments, have been the critical elements in the total regional effort at aquaculture development. It is gratifying to find that this regional study and now this workshop, have been successfully mounted in the same spirit of collaboration and cohesiveness.

I reiterate my warm greetings and welcome, and I look forward to an interesting workshop.

Annex I-3
KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Dr. Plodprasop Suraswadi
Director General, Department of Fisheries, Thailand

Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, Good morning. I would like to extend to you, on behalf of the Government of Thailand, a very warm welcome. We thank you for the privilege of hosting this project and this international gathering. We are honoured by your presence and I hope that you will find your stay pleasant; I know you will find it very educational. Thailand can offer plenty of lessons, on aquaculture development and on environmental management, which is the theme of this conference. It is well known to most of you that along with the rapid development of the Thai economy, we have had to urgently cope with a number of problems related to the environment. In several areas we have been fairly effective.

Among the agricultural sectors, fisheries (and especially aquaculture) has seen the greatest expansion in recent years, not only in Thailand but also in this region. At the same time, it has had its share of significant problems. Thailand has extensive inland fisheries and aquaculture resources in rivers, swamps, lakes and reservoirs. Having a longer history and experience in inland fisheries we have been able to develop successful measures to manage the fishery resources and protect the ecosystem in these inland water bodies.

Much of the recent expansion has been in coastal aquaculture, in particular marine shrimp culture. This rapid growth also led to the conversion of a significant area of mangrove to shrimp ponds and, in other areas of the country, to the conversion of rice fields and idle grasslands into shrimp farms. While only 38% of the total 1.17 million rai (or 187,200 hectares) of mangrove that have been removed since 1961 were turned into aquaculture ponds, their removal has brought about various problems, some having attained a high degree of severity such as loss of habitat of valuable wildlife, coastal erosion and a perceptible decrease in the productivity of coastal waters, all of which have negatively affected the livelihood of people in coastal communities. The other side of the ledger has been the enormous earnings for the economy in the export of aquaculture products and the creation of ancillary enterprises that have stimulated more economic activity. Thailand has became the top aquaculture producer of shrimp, shooting from 1,590 tons in 1977 to more than 162,000 tons in 1992–1993. In-keeping with the role of aquaculture, this has also compensated for the decreasing catch in shrimp product, which has gone down from 117,000 tons in 1977 to only about 80,000 tons last year. These economic gains have not been without costs, includeding conflicts among common users of the resource, loss of productivity, decreasing yield, and higher cost of production.

We have ideas of how to promote balanced development but, for relevant and emphatic policies, we need guidelines such as this regional study will provide. The government has placed a major portion of its recent efforts on dealing with the effects of such developments on the productivity of the land, on the quality of the surrounding waters, on the capacity of these two resources to produce continuously and on the social and economic well-being of the people.

While the Government has been able to put into place adequate measures to lessen the adverse consequences of rapid growth on resource capacity and social harmony, we do realise that the issues are complex and do not readily allow for easy and neat solutions. What makes it even more demanding, to policy makers and government agencies like the Department of Fisheries especially, is the need to strike an acceptable and popular balance between promoting social development and economic growth and ensuring that the capacity of the natural environment to produce is sustained. For us, the search for the right blend of solutions has not been easy and, as those of you from the policy sector of your own governments may confirm, the search is sometimes distracted by emotional issues.

It is for this reason that we in Government look forward to the results of this very important conference on aquaculture and the environment. We expect it to provide us with effective guidelines to better manage our aquaculture development. Thailand was keen to host the project and has been actively involved in its implementation aware of the importance of the study and its contribution to a sustained aquaculture development.

I would like to thank FAO for its support of this timely regional project and NACA for effectively coordinating its implementation. I am aware that this project involves the participation of 18 governments in the region and that it has been efficiently operated under the spirit of technical co-operation among developing countries. Thailand, as you know, hosted the NACA project which has now evolved into the independent NACA organisation, and also the Regional Seafarming Project and the NACA headquarters. Through this, and with the active involvement of the Department of Fisheries and its various institutes as well as several of the universities involved in fisheries, Thailand has shown its strong adherence to regional co-operation in aquaculture development. I would like to take this opportunity to re-affirm Thailand's support to regional co-operation, especially in the crucial area of environment and fishery resource development and management.

I would also like to thank our esteemed colleagues from the other governments for contributing their time, manpower and physical resources to the successful execution of this important regional activity. This regional effort strengthens the solidarity of governments and confirms our collective desire to solve shared problems.

I am pleased to acknowledge the presence of representatives of several donor and technical assistance agencies in this conference. I would like to call on international and regional organisations to continue to provide the appropriate support and guidance to governments. As you can see we are doing our utmost to help ourselves, sharing our resources and pooling our efforts, through such inter-governmental mechanisms as NACA and similar regional bodies, to solve our common problems. I assure you that we shall continue to do so, because we fully realise the need for a sustained effort to solve environmental problems. There are areas where your respective organisations can provide the critical assistance to governments' collective efforts. I strongly suggest that this meeting also identify and define such areas in order for your programmes to be aligned with the needs of governments.

Finally, I congratulate the organisers of this conference, extend a warm welcome to colleagues from the other governments and my best wishes for the successful conclusion of the workshop. I wish you an enjoyable meeting and a pleasant stay in Thailand.

Annex I-4
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME

Monday, 21 February 1994
Morning Programme

1. Registration

   0800 – 0845	Arrival of Guests and Registration of Participants.
   0845 – 0900	Assembly at FAO RAPA Conference Hall.

   
   

2. Opening ceremony

   0900 – 0910	Welcome address
   	Mr. Imre Csavas,
   	Regional Aquaculture Officer, FAO RAPA.
   0910 – 0920	Speech
   	Dr. Banchong Tiensongrusmee,
   	Co-ordinator, NACA.
   0920 – 0930	Keynote address
   	Dr. Plodprasop Suraswadi,
   	Director General, Department of Fisheries, Thailand.

   
   

3. Description of scope and objectives of the workshop

   10.00–10.30    Mr Ulf Wijkström, TCP Team Leader.

4. Presentation of Country Reports by the National Environment Co-ordinators
   (Country reports: 15 min; clarifications, 5 minutes)

   1030 – 1230	Bangladesh.
   	India.
   	Nepal.
   	Sri Lanka.

   Afternoon Session

   Presentation of Country Reports (continued)

   1330 – 1630	Cambodia.
   	Lao PDR.
   	Vietnam.
   	Hong Kong.
   	China.
   	Korea (Rep.).

   Tuesday, 22 February 1994
   Morning Session

   Presentation of Country Reports (continued)

   0830 – 1200	Iran.
   	Indonesia.
   	Malaysia.
   	Myanmar.
   	Philippines.
   	Thailand.

   Afternoon Session

5. Presentation of study overview

   1330 – 1630     TCP Project Team.

   Evening Session

6. Working groups on inland and coastal aquaculture

   1800 – 2000

   Management options in inland aquaculture. Management options in coastal aquaculture.

   Wednesday, 23 February 1994
   Morning Session

7. Inland aquaculture and the environment

   0830 – 1200     Resource persons: review and general discussions.

   Afternoon Session

8. Coastal aquaculture and environment

   1330 – 1630     Resource persons: review and general discussions.

9. Working groups on inland and coastal aquaculture

   1800 – 2000

   Management options in inland aquaculture. Management options in coastal aquaculture.

   Thursday, 24 February 1994
   Morning Session

10. Environmental management options

    0830 – 1200     General discussion and formulation of suggestions by the Working Groups

    Afternoon Session

11. Formulation of recommendations

    1330 – 1630     Final discussion and formulation of recommendations.

    Friday, 25 February 1994
    Whole Day

12. Guided study tour

    Saturday, 26 February 1994, 09.30 – 12.00

13. Adoption of workshop report

    0830 – 1130

    Chairman: Dr. P.V. Dehadrai, Deputy Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Chairman, NACA Governing Council.

14. Closing ceremony