Water Use Conflict between Agriculture and Fisheries in Bangladesh

In many areas of Bangladesh, beels or shallow wetlands are dewatered or drained to allow dry season agriculture. Structural interventions including embankments and sluice gates are often introduced for this purpose, with the main objective to increase crop production with higher economic return to the farmers who are relatively strong in the community power structure. However, this arrangement adversely affects fisheries, ecosystem and their livelihood support in the short and long terms. So the water use conflicts between dry season agriculture and fisheries are almost inevitable. The conflicts are more complex where the open access fisheries resources are limited due to intervention of the aquatic ecosystem. Even within a participatory process of decision-making for such interventions, the needs and priorities of the fishing communities are often marginalized, mostly because of their weak position in the community. Based on a socio-technical approach, this book provides an understanding of the conflicts between agriculture and fisheries due to structural interventions in a selected water resources development project.