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In 2005, Southeast Asia’s largest lagoon ecosystem fell into biological, social and economic chaos. Ponds were built illegally or in areas that restricted the lagoon’s tidal circulation, mangroves were cut down to make room for aquaculture development, and unregulated fishing led to overfishing and resource depletion. In short, the situation threatened the food, nutrition and income security of the 300,000 people who depended on the lagoon in Hue Province, Vietnam.
Today, thanks to responses from local people and capacity building through FAO’s Integrated Management of Lagoon Activities (IMOLA) project, a lagoon-wide survey has set targets for reducing the number of aquaculture ponds and is replanting important habitats such as mangroves.
In the meantime, fishing associations have developed plans to enable locals to collaboratively manage their activities, using methods that allow fish populations to rebuild while still providing fishermen with the catches they need.
Today, new boundary markers dot the landscape between Sanjiang Lake and Kaohai Lake, marking the use of specific areas by local communities. They serve as visible signposts of the success of FAO’s Integrated Management of Lagoon Activities (IMOLA) project, which is working to put the lagoon on a positive path to a future in which the many communities that share it can sustain their livelihoods and multiple natural resources.
The 22,000-hectare Triang-Cau Hai watershed in Hue Province, Vietnam, is the largest lagoon ecosystem in Southeast Asia. Surrounding the watershed are 33 communities and 326 villages, with approximately 100,000 people directly dependent on capture fisheries or aquaculture from the lagoon. Another 200,000 people indirectly depend on the lagoon for activities such as aquaculture in nearby coastal areas. In short, the lagoon provides rice, fish and income for one-third of Hue Province’s 1 million people.
Identify problems and find solutions
When the project began, there were few regulations governing all aspects of the lagoon’s use. Mangroves, important habitats and nurseries for many marine species, were cut down to make room for aquaculture ponds, which were used primarily for shrimp farming. In turn, overly intensive aquaculture activities led to pollution from overfeed, organic waste, and untreated effluent. Many of the ponds were built illegally, and some were built in areas that interfered with the tidal cycle necessary to mix the lagoon water with the brackish seawater outside the lagoon’s entrance. Unregulated trap fishing had depleted the fishery to the point where it was mostly juvenile fish that were caught.
The FAO IMOLA project, which uses a “bottom-up” ecosystem approach to fisheries management, began in 2005. The project involves working with communities around the lagoon to raise their awareness not only of the importance of developing fisheries management plans to ensure sustainable use of the lagoon’s resources, but also of the fact that their fisheries and aquaculture activities are part of wider environmental, economic, social and governance issues.
FAO helped local communities to form 26 fisheries associations and supported the improvement of nine existing associations, creating a methodology for management activities covering 80 percent of the lagoon. With the help of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology introduced by FAO, the fisheries associations and the government have developed a master map and repurposed the lagoon – creating and marking areas designated for nurseries, capture fisheries and aquaculture. During the mapping of the lagoon, they discovered more than 6,000 ponds built around the lake’s shores – many of them illegal and many abandoned. Thanks to the mapping and improved tenure management of these areas, a master plan is now in place to reorganize the ponds in a way that is both environmentally friendly and sustainable.
Working together to look to the future
Together, the associations created a representative body that works with government departments to manage people’s activities and the lagoon environment. When the government handed control of fishing activities to local associations, the latter reduced their members’ capture fisheries by about 30-40% as part of a management plan. This reduction actually allowed the resources to recover, and now they use fewer traps, catch bigger fish, and are more efficient. As people gradually became aware of the interconnectedness of the ecosystem—realizing that their catches depended not just on luck or skill but also on factors such as the hills above and the aquaculture ponds next to them—they began moving up the hillsides and now incorporate logging and other issues into their plans.
While the most immediate goal of the project was to improve the livelihoods of people who depend on the lagoon by implementing sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management plans, implementing these plans has also provided additional benefits. The lagoon, and the people who depend on it, are more resilient to frequent natural disasters and flooding, which are expected to be exacerbated by climate change. The long-term legacy of the project is that in all lagoon activities – from fishing, aquaculture and processing to the use of new information systems – the body of water will continue to provide livelihoods for local communities and sustain its many economic, social and natural resources well into the future.
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