Monoculture destroys coast and forests

Philip Gain

photo: Sami Sarkis/getty Images

Shrimp monoculture in the coast
The Chokoria Sundarban, a patch of unique reserve and protected forest in the Southeast of Bangladesh has lost all but its name. Today, shrimp monoculture claims almost all of the forestland while the rest lies bare. The lush green vegetation is gone, and also gone is the unique, diverse life forms its environment once sustained.

In the old days, during cyclones and tidal surges, the 21,000-acre mangrove forest served as a shield and gave much-needed protection to the people living by the sea. Now, no trees, no such safety-belt.
The Chokoria Sundarban enriched the local environment with the diverse animal and plant life it nurtured. The forest was full of myriad species of trees, some as high as 15 meters. Sundari, Geoa, Keora, Bain were some of the
major species.

Once this forest was full of fish and naturally grown shrimps. But local varieties of fish have dramatically decreased, some to the point of extinction. The intricate network of the mangrove roots used to provide a sanctuary to fish, shrimps and to aquatic reptiles.

The forest was the home of tigers, deer, wild cats, wild boars, foxes, monkeys and many types of reptiles. But now in the desolate land, animals and birds are rarely seen. The mangrove swamp that was so important for the coastal life is gone forever.

Many of the early settlers in Chokoria earned their livelihood by producing salt from sea water. And for processing salt, they depended on wood, cut from the forests. This contributed to the destruction of the mangroves.

But the wholesale attack on the forest began in the 1980s when the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank started funding shrimp farms within the forest area. These multilateral development banks (MDBs) were providing loans to the Bangladesh government to help this export-oriented venture.

The Asian Development Bank began to fund shrimp cultivation in 1982. Its loan helped set up over a hundred shrimp farms, each eleven acres in size.

The World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) appeared on the scene in 1986. They had a project to spend some US$26 million for shrimp cultivation in Bangladesh. The World Bank's loan helped prepare nearly 500 plots here, each ten acres in size.

The World Bank claims that its project (with structural adjustment loan) did not cause any environmental problem in Chokoria. Rather it improved the environmental conditions there. But satellite images of the area tell a different story.

In 1972, 19,390 acres were covered by forests in the Chokoria Sundarban. The images of 1974 and 1976 depict almost the same picture. In 1979, a portion of the forest at its Northwest corner disappeared. In 1981 the forest area decreased to 8,650 acres. In 1985, the forest came down to 4,072 acres. In 1991 even that was cut by half. In 1995, the forests completely vanished from the picture. As satellite images show, the gradual disappearance of the forest coincides with the growth of shrimp farming.

The Asian Development Bank's project was completed in 1986 and the World Bank's one in 1993. By then, shrimp cultivation had wiped out the entire forest. Interestingly, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank came up with contradictory views on this issue.

In its project [Shrimp Culture Project] completion report (1994) World Bank claims: "There are no negative environmental effects caused by the project. On the contrary, some of the adverse effects, which existed under the pre-project conditions, such as water logging and uncontrolled cuts in embankments...have been minimized or eliminated by the project interventions. No mangrove forests have been destroyed as a result of the project."

But in its project [Aqua Culture Project] completion report [1989] ADB says: "...about 800 ha of mangrove forest was (or is being) cleared to culture brackish water shrimp. A large portion of approximately 100,000 ha of land now being utilized for shrimp culture in Bangladesh was originally mangrove forest. ...The clearing of 800 ha of mangrove in the Chokoria Sundarban under the Project has clearly reduced shrimp/fish breeding and nursery grounds in the area..."

Shrimp cultivation has dramatically changed the coastal landscapes and the livelihood options of the local poor people. In the shrimp season, thousands of women, men and children flock to the shore waters, rivers and canals to catch shrimp fries.

Experts believe shrimp cultivation has caused serious damage to the soil of the Chokoria Sundarban area. The soil of mangrove forests contains a high proportion of acid sulfate. Different mangrove species help the soil to keep it down and maintain a balance. Without the mangrove coverage, the soil of Chokoria has lost that balance. Experts say if shrimp culture continues the increasing content of acid sulfate will ruin the soil completely. Then it will be impossible to regenerate the mangroves in the denuded areas.

Shrimp culture in the Chokoria Sundarban benefited only a handful of mostly non-local individuals, organizations or companies. It brought huge profits for the absentee farm owners but enormous losses for the local people.

The demise of the Chokoria Sundarban is not a unique event in the Southeast coast. Most of the mangroves in the South and South-eastern coast including a significant portion of the planted mangroves have been cleared and replaced by prawn farms. The Sundarbans in the Southwest, single largest mangrove patch on earth, is also under attack of shrimp monoculture. Extensive harvest of prawn seedlings from nature in the coast and the extensive shrimp monoculture in the Southwestern coast is bad news for the Sundarbans, the single largest mangrove patch on earth.

Monoculture plantation
While the coastal forests and its environment are under serious threat from largely 100% expert-oriented shrimp monoculture, native forest patches in the plains and hills has been under attack of "simple" monoculture plantation mainly with exotic species [such as acacia, eucalyptus and teak].

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