The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) describes the Mekong River as coming in close to the Amazon River as far as aquatic biodiversity is concerned. The river is home to more than 1,000 freshwater species including the famed Irrawaddy dolphin and the giant freshwater stingray.
But these, along with other aquatic life, are in slow decline.
The culprit: destructive and unsustainable fishing practices.
While the river’s aquatic resource is used mainly for livelihood, the WWF notes that there is a great deal of under-reported subsistence fishing activities that contribute to overfishing in the Mekong. In many cases, destructive and unsustainable practices abound in subsistence fishing, such as the use of traps by fishers in the Khong Village, Champassak Province in Lao PDR, a practice that limits the movement of the fish and consequently, their reproduction.
Such unsustainable practices are not also only constrained to the Mekong River. Overharvesting of fishery resources in the Lower Songkhram River in Thailand, one of the Mekong’s tributaries, has resulted into a decline in fish stocks. In the Tonle Sap Lake of Cambodia, electric fishing and the use of drag net technology (giant cast nets) may yield high fish catch for the moment but has been pointed out as unsustainable in the long term.
These practices, coupled with the impacts of climate change, damaging agricultural practices, not to mention the threat of the hydropower plant projects in the upper stream on the river’s natural biodiversity, are significantly changing the quality and quantity of fish catch in the Mekong. This, in turn, has pronounced effects on the livelihood and food security conditions of the people and communities relying on the abundance of the river.
Bringing the fish back
The unfortunate thing is that it’s not so easy to “bring” the fish back. Compared to farming where seedlings for the next planting season can be grown in a matter of weeks, restoring the fish catch and bringing back the slowly disappearing fish species in the Mekong will take more than a couple of weeks, months and even years.
The solution requires a hodgepodge of several things: stricter patrolling, policies promoting inter-country collaboration, and an organized and empowered fishery network, among other things. At the very basic level, however, is the need for greater awareness and improved consciousness of sustainable fishing practices, including enhanced fishery management.
While local management practices are in place, such as the imposition of conservation zones and seasonal limitations, there should be more conscious efforts to monitor other fishing practices. This includes regulating the building of fish traps to allow fish species to migrate, multiply and produce new fish. Alongside this is the need for stronger measures that will discourage, prohibit and penalize destructive and illegal fishing practices such as the use of explosives and electric fishing.
Some fishing households have also been known to use poison indiscriminately to catch fish, and this calls for stronger efforts to educate fisherfolks of its subsequent effects on the fish habitat and the overall aquatic environment.
With small scale, subsistence fishing a considerably significant activity in the Mekong and yet not thoroughly monitored and recorded, another area that requires special focus is the training and awareness-raising among local fisher folks and communities in recording their own fish catch. This can, in a way, help concerned agencies in gathering data and putting together more reliable information on subsistence fishing, its extent and impacts.
Community-level initiatives that promote more efficient fishery management and accountability are also needed. At the same time, community leaders and authorities should be more vigilant to ensure that such community-led initiatives like community fishery groups do not become cover for large businesses that want to engage in extensive fishing.
In a report from The Cambodia Daily, an official from Cambodia admitted that while the government is trying to gradually eliminate illegal fishing, it cannot be totally eradicated in an instant. Stories of illegal fishing, in Cambodia as well as in the other countries of the Mekong Region, serve to highlight one crucial point: the concerted efforts among authorities, fisherfolks, and the community in cracking down on illegal and unsustainable fishing practices.
As authorities cite the lack of cooperation among community members in reporting cases of illegal fishing, communities on the one hand blame the slow response and the lack of action among concerned authorities on the illegal fishers. On the other side of the spectrum are the fisher folk whose economic conditions drive them to resort to illegal fishing as their only choice.
It is apparent that the issue of sustainable fishing practices in the Mekong River demands a coordinated, integrative and systemic approach. While the adoption of sustainable fishing practices is a major responsibility of the fisher folk, the institutional requirements for creating a conducive environment that will foster, promote and encourage sustainable fishing is a responsibility of the government and concerned agencies.
More importantly, linking sustainable fishing practices with the other elements and players in the Mekong River’s overall health will provide stakeholders a better understanding of how one action impacts the other. Hopefully, this will lead to more proactive and coordinated decisions, efforts and initiatives.
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