Fisheries (including aquaculture and fishing)

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Description: "Locals and fishermen in Dawei are fighting to retain access and ownership of Pae Sin Island after a private company was given a permit to use the island in its entirety. It’s not the first time businesses have been granted permits to some of Myanmar’s islands and beaches. This week we look at why permits are being issues, and the impact of these decisions on local people. Doh Athan is a weekly podcast that looks at human rights issues. It’s produced by Frontier with media partners from around the country, through a partnership with Fondation Hirondelle. It is supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Myanmar and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Frontier Myanmar" (Myanmar)
2020-07-10
Date of entry/update: 2020-07-10
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Sub-title: The fisheries industry says it deserves more help from the government to deal with a downturn caused by the pandemic, but some government officials insist that it’s business as usual in the sector.
Description: "Myanmar had its sights set on a record-breaking year for fishery exports until the coronavirus pandemic swept away orders, closed factories and jeopardised millions of jobs. Now industry sources say the sector needs government support to remain strong and survive well into the future. However, private sector stakeholders and the government offer vastly differing assessments of the impact of COVID-19 on the fisheries industry, one of the nation’s most important export earners. The Department of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation believes the sector has continued to thrive despite COVID-19, and has figures to justify its rosy assessment. They show exports are strong and rising, averaging just over $81 million a month in the fiscal year beginning last October, up from $60.16 million a month in 2018-19. Exports in the eight months to the end of May totalled US$651 million, compared to $722 million for the entire previous fiscal year and $700 million in 2017-18. Support independent journalism in Myanmar. Sign up to be a Frontier member. But industry figures poured water over any suggestion Myanmar could meet a $1 billion target set last year. They say exports began to slump from February, as buyers cancelled orders and Myanmar factories, including processing plants, were forced to temporarily close due to COVID-19 prevention measures..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Frontier Myanmar" (Myanmar)
2020-06-12
Date of entry/update: 2020-06-14
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Description: "About 1 million people may lose their jobs in Myanmar’s fisheries industry, with almost all exports ceasing since February as the spread of Covid-19 prompted major buyers, led by China and the U.S., to halt orders. Processing plants wouldn’t have been able to deliver anyway, as factory closures were part of the government’s measures to stall the pandemic. Before the outbreak, the Myanmar Fisheries Federation forecast record exports of $1 billion this year, up about 40% from 2019. That’s been slashed to $350 million. The fisheries sector employs about 3.5 million people in Myanmar, “It is a time of zero exports without any new orders from buyer countries,” Hnin Oo, senior vice president of the Myanmar Fisheries Federation, said in a telephone interview Friday. Myanmar fishery exports largely depend on China, the U.S., Japan and European countries, he said.roughly 6% of the Southeast Asian nation’s workforce. In some coastal regions, one in three workers earns a living from seafood and marine products, according to a World Bank report in June 2019..."
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Source/publisher: "Bloomberg News" (New York)
2020-05-30
Date of entry/update: 2020-05-30
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Description: "Less than two weeks after video of five men being beaten by Tatmadaw soldiers went viral online, the victims of the “unlawful interrogations” appeared before the Sittwe District Court on May 22 and were arraigned on terrorism charges, lawyer U Kyaw Nyunt Maung told DMG. The five men from Arakan State’s Ponnagyun Township were among 38 people interrogated by the military on April 19. But while the other 33 were reportedly released the next day, Ko Nyi Nyi Aung, Ko Aung Myo Lin and Ko Maung Chay from Kyaukseik village; Ko Min Soe from Ponnagyun town; and Ko Kyaw Win Hein from Zeebingyi village were charged under the Counter-Terrorism Law days later, accused of having ties to the Arakan Army. Videos showing the men being repeatedly punched and kicked by soldiers aboard a Tatmadaw watercraft surfaced online on May 10, and two days later the military admitted that “some members of the security forces performed unlawful interrogations against them.” Ko Kyaw Win Hein emerged from the “interrogation” experiencing chest pain and was being provided medical treatment for the injuries he sustained at the hands of the security forces, his mother said..."
Source/publisher: "Eurasia Review"
2020-05-26
Date of entry/update: 2020-05-26
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Description: "Myanmar’s aquaculture and fisheries sectors are suffering from the collapse in the export trade that has accompanied the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The EU and North America account for about 45 percent of Myanmar’s aquaculture and fisheries exports – which were forecast to be worth $750 million in 2020 - while China and Thailand account for the remaining 55 percent. “Exports have collapsed. All international orders have been cancelled and we have not received any new orders from the European Union (EU) since they are all locked down,” U Myo Nyunt, secretary of the Myanmar Fisheries Products Processors & Exporters Association (MPEA), told the Myanmar Times. The drop in demand will affect businesses throughout the seafood supply chain. “At first, those operating cold storage facilities did not have any income and some had to shut down. Now, factories are not allowed to open and jobs are dwindling,” said Nyunt. With losses mounting in April and May, the MPEA expects fishing and aquaculture activities to grind to a halt from June to August, while the aquaculture sector could face longer disruption if farmers are unable to restock during this time. As a result, the MPEA is projecting the largest loss in history for the sector for the six months between March and August and the industry is now calling on the government for more aid..."
Source/publisher: "The Fish Site"
2020-05-19
Date of entry/update: 2020-05-19
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Sub-title: Myanmar’s fisheries sector will face its largest loss in history if demand does not pick up very soon, said U Myo Nyunt, secretary of the Myanmar Fisheries Products Processors & Exporters Association (MPEA).
Description: "“Exports have collapsed. All international orders have been cancelled and we have not received any new orders from the European Union (EU) since they are all locked down,” he told The Myanmar Times. The EU and other western countries accounts for about 45 percent of Myanmar’s fisheries exports, while China and Thailand account for the remaining 55pc. The drop in demand will affect businesses throughout the fisheries supply chain. “At first, those operating cold storage facilities did not have any income and some had to shut down. Now, factories are not allowed to open and jobs are dwindling,” said U Myo Nyunt. Fishermen further up the value chain are suffering too. Without demand, more fishing vessels have been seen anchoring at Yangon’s ports and some fishermen have been forced to auction off their boats. “Normally, fishermen sell hundreds of tonnes of fish and prawns a day. But when the factories don’t operate, there are no buyers,” U Myo Nyunt said. With losses mounting in April and May, the MPEA expects upstream fishing and aquaculture activities to grind to a halt from June to August. Consequently, even if factories are allowed to reopen, there will be a shortage of fisheries supplies for processing. Importantly, the delays could disrupt the entire fishing season as fish farmers, who abide by fixed schedules such as for the farming of fish roe and fish breeding will not be able to carry out their activities according to plan..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Myanmar Times" (Myanmar)
2020-05-10
Date of entry/update: 2020-05-11
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Description: "Nestled between giants comprising half the global population, control or contagion in Myanmar has huge ramifications, says Elliot Brennan. STOCKHOLM: As Thailand shut down its border last month, a wave of migrant workers jostled shoulder-to-shoulder back through the Myawaddy crossing to Myanmar. Some 45,498 Myawaddy migrant workers have reportedly been placed in quarantine – a total of 50,731 people were in isolation as of this week. But the effectiveness of the measures has been questioned. Concern grows that this may be Myanmar’s cruise-ship moment, but it is only one of a growing number. According to figures last week, the country had 62 confirmed COVID-19 patients and four deaths, the results compiled from more than 2,100 tests. Recent cases suggest that some undetected community spread may also be occurring. The donation last week of a testing machine increases Myanmar’s testing capacity from 80 per day to 1,400 – reliant still on obtaining enough reagents to conduct the tests..."
Source/publisher: "CNA" ( Singapore)
2020-04-22
Date of entry/update: 2020-04-23
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Sub-title: The government will set up a vessel-monitoring system control centre (VMS) in Myeik city in Tanintharyi Region in an effort to combat illegal fishing, a senior Fisheries Department official said.
Description: "U Than Chaung, head of the department in Tanintharyi, said the system will be able to identify fishing vessels that are operating legally in the area. “All fishing vessels will have to enter specified checkpoints for mandatory inspections, and we will be able to determine whether they have the necessary permits,” he said. The VMS control centre can prevent illegal fishing, he added. The centre, which is under construction in Myeik, can monitor the movements of not only vessels off Tanintharyi but also across the nation. U Than Chaung, head of the department in Tanintharyi, said the system will be able to identify fishing vessels that are operating legally in the area. “All fishing vessels will have to enter specified checkpoints for mandatory inspections, and we will be able to determine whether they have the necessary permits,” he said. The VMS control centre can prevent illegal fishing, he added. The centre, which is under construction in Myeik, can monitor the movements of not only vessels off Tanintharyi but also across the nation..."
Source/publisher: "Myanmar Times" (Myanmar)
2020-03-04
Date of entry/update: 2020-03-04
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Sub-title: The Fisheries Department declared a second marine protected area in Tanintharyi Region to protect endangered fish species and marine habitats.
Description: "The new conservation area covers the coastal waters between Kawthoung township and Kau-ye Island, the department said in a statement. Myanmar Marine Fisheries Law prohibits commercial fishing in the protected zone, and villagers living there must engage only in regulated and sustainable fishing. The department said the protected area is of international significance because of its biodiversity, including several newly discovered fish species. Its mangroves, coral reefs and sea grass beds serve as nurseries and spawning areas for fish. Dugong and whale sharks are among its inhabitants. Lampi Island in the Andaman Sea was Myanmar’s first island national park and marine protected area. It is the “Mother island” of the Moken, the sea gypsies who roamed the Andaman Sea with their traditional boats and now live in the park. It was declared an ASEAN Heritage Park in 2003. Myanmar has declared an international obligation to protect 10 percent of its coastal and marine areas. The department said it will propose a dozen more marine-protected areas across the country. Environmentalists and conservationists said Myanmar’s marine resources are under severe stress due to over exploitation. Recent studies said Myanmar coral reefs declined by 70pc in Rakhine State and Tanintharyi, in particular the offshore islands of the Myeik Archipelago, considered the most favourable grounds for coral. Fish inhabiting the surface waters of Myanmar declined by about 80pc between 1980 and 2018, and there was a steep drop in commercially important fish on the seabed, according to a 2019 report on research by Myanmar and Norwegian scientists..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Myanmar Times" (Myanmar)
2020-03-02
Date of entry/update: 2020-03-02
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Sub-title: Integrated fish farming may be toxic, but farmers say banning it will raise prices and put people out of work
Description: "At a Yangon fish farm one recent morning, Myanmar Now watched as chicken faeces fell from coops suspended above a pond, down into the water, where a scrum of fish formed to snack on it. The practice, known as integrated animal-fish farming, pairs fish ponds with other livestock - often chicken, but also pigs and geese - grown in close proximity, with the animal waste used to generate fish feed. Advocates say the method is economical, and that the animal waste acts only to fertilize the phytoplankton in the ponds that fish feed on. They deny the fish eat the animal waste itself. But Myanmar Now saw fish feasting on such waste at six separate integrated farms in Yangon’s Hlegu and Mingalardon township during trips in January and February. Public health experts say the practice encourages the spread of harmful bacteria and that toxic metals found in chicken feed accumulate in fish, from both the chicken waste and from chicken feed that spills into ponds from the coops above. Trade groups also worry about the practice. It’s banned in much of the developed world, and they say Myanmar’s continued use of integrated farms makes Myanmar a pariah in international seafood markets..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
2020-02-26
Date of entry/update: 2020-02-27
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Description: "Myanmar earned about US$310 million from fishery export from October 1 to January 17 in this fiscal year and it is more US$45 million compared with the amount of fishery export in the same period in the last fiscal year, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. At present, Myanmar is needed tenfold or more to reach the amount of fishery export made by neighbouring countries. The exporters need to advance their breeding techniques instead of fishing naturally, according to the fisheries department. Myanmar will cooperate with technicians from Indonesia, Taiwan and China to build fish food factories, cold-storage factories and modernized factories to earn US$3 billion from fishery sector, said Htay Myint, Chairman of Myanmar Fisheries Federation. It can create 100,000 job opportunities and Ministry of Planning and Finance will give loans to buy land to build the factories and fish and prawns..."
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Source/publisher: "Eleven Media Group" (Myanmar)
2020-01-31
Date of entry/update: 2020-02-01
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Topic: fishing, labour, labour issues, Ayeyarwady Region, Ayeyarwady River, Myanmar Fisheries, Federation, Myanmar Police Force, Department of Fisheries
Sub-title: Workers spend eight months without break on fishing rafts moored off the Ayeyarwady Region coast, enduring beatings and deprivation to keep Myanmar supplied with fish paste.
Topic: fishing, labour, labour issues, Ayeyarwady Region, Ayeyarwady River, Myanmar Fisheries, Federation, Myanmar Police Force, Department of Fisheries
Description: "A DEJECTED Daw Myint Myint San was sitting in the small room of the labour office in Ayeyarwady Region’s Pyapon Township, nodding as if she understood what the labour officer was saying. The labour officer, a woman, was brandishing a book of labour law regulations and speaking loudly. “It clearly states in the 1923 law that you cannot get compensation unless you have a death certificate,” the labour officer said. “How can I believe your husband is dead unless you can produce the death certificate?” “But officer, my husband died at sea and his body has not been found,” Myint Myint San replied. “How can I show you a death certificate?” Her husband, U Zaw Oo, left their home in Kweh Lweh Yo Seit village in Ayeyarwady’s Myaungmya Township last August to work on one of the fishing rafts off Pyapon, which are notorious for labour abuses. In October, Myint Myint San received a phone call from her husband’s employer to say he had drowned while trying to escape from the raft. Asked where her husband died, Myint Myint San points to the big distributary of the Ayeyarwady River that flows through Pyapon on its way to the sea. The employer offered Myint Myint San K600,000 (US$402) in compensation for the death of her husband. Thinking the amount too small, she complained to the labour office in Pyapon. However, under the 1923 Workmen’s Compensation Act, which was amended in 2005, Myint Myint San is entitled to receive compensation of only between K150,000 and K450,000 from the employer for the death of her husband if she has a death certificate. If her husband had paid into a social security fund, she might expect a higher amount, but it’s unlikely that any workers on the rafts have such protection. Myint Myint San had no choice but to accept the K600,000. “I’ve been deprived of a husband, but they have only given me K600,000,” she said. “How can I manage with three children?” As Myint Myint San left the labour office, she cursed the kyar phaung (tile rafts), the bamboo fishing rafts launched from Pyapon, which are named after the “tile nets” that workers cast from their sides to catch fish..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Frontier Myanmar" (Myanmar)
2020-01-20
Date of entry/update: 2020-01-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Topic: Dredging, Biodiversity, Dams, Fishing, Golden Triangle, Mekong River, China
Topic: Dredging, Biodiversity, Dams, Fishing, Golden Triangle, Mekong River, China
Description: "97 kilometres of rocks in Thai waters stand between Beijing and dominance over the Mekong, a mighty river that feeds millions as it threads south from the Tibetan plateau through five countries before emptying into the South China Sea. China has long wanted to dredge the riverbed in northern Thailand to open passage for massive cargo ships – and potentially military vessels. Ultimately, a link could be carved from Yunnan province thousands of kilometres south through the Mekong countries – Myanmar, Lao, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. There, the river emerges into the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes and the centrepiece of Beijing's trade and security strategy for its Asian neighbourhood. Under the tagline "Shared River, Shared Future" China insists it seeks only the sustainable development of the river and to split the spoils of a trade and energy boom with its Mekong neighbours and their market of 240 million people. But squeezed for value by the dams lacing China's portion of the river – and further downstream –the Mekong is already changing. Fish stocks have collapsed say Thai fisherman, and nutrient-rich land in the Vietnamese delta is sinking as the sediment flow shrinks..."
Source/publisher: "The ASEAN Post" (Malaysia)
2020-01-13
Date of entry/update: 2020-01-13
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Description: "Myanmar Navy handed them over to the Bangladesh Coast Guard at the waterline on Friday night, Lieutenant Commander M Hamidul Islam, the force’s spokesman, told bdnews24.com. They were under the coastguards’ custody now and it would take some time to transfer them to their families, Hamidul said. They are from Chattogram, Bhola, Munshiganj and Chandpur districts. On Thursday, Myanmar Navy detained the fishermen in the country’s waters near Saint Martin's Island of Bangladesh, according to Hamidul. “The boat’s engine went out of order while the fishermen were fishing in the Saint Martin’s area last night. At one point, the boat was captured when it drifted into the Myanmar territory.” The authorities later made efforts to bring them back through discussion with Myanmar officials, said Hamidul..."
Source/publisher: "bdnews24.com" (Bangladesh)
2019-12-07
Date of entry/update: 2019-12-07
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Description: "Members of the Bangladesh Coast Guard have arrested 16 Myanmar fishermen and seized two boats from the Bay of Bengal in Cox's Bazar. They were apprehended nearby St Martin's Island in the maritime boundary of Bangladesh early Friday. Lt Saad Mohammed Taim, Coast Guard commander at the St Martin's station, said the fishermen were detained for illegally fishing in Bangladeshi waters. They are the residents of Myanmar's Akyab district, he said, adding that the seized boats were handed over to Teknaf police station..."
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Source/publisher: "Dhaka Tribune" (Bangladesh)
2019-11-30
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-30
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Description: "Myanmar’s top human rights body said Wednesday it will investigate the domestic fishing industry’s use of workers sold to operators by human traffickers following a case involving a university student who went missing for weeks after being abducted by alleged traffickers. Myat Thura Tun, a history major at Dagon University in Yangon, was trafficked by brokers on Oct. 2 and sold to the operators of a fishing raft in Kha Pyat village, Pyapon township, in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region, for 700,000 kyats (U.S. $456), according to local media reports. He had worked on the raft for about 45 days when his family tracked him down and secured his release last week after paying 800,000 kyats (U.S. $521). The boy was physically and mentally traumatized, with the upper part of his left ear cut off and injuries on the rest of his body. Myat Thura Tun indicated that he had been tortured by a supervisor on the raft, local media said. Earlier this week, Myo Nyunt, spokesman of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), told the Myanmar media organization Mizzima that the party would work with the regional government in handling the case, meet with the victim, and discuss ways to eliminate human trafficking..."
Source/publisher: "Radio Free Asia (RFA)" (USA)
2019-11-27
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-28
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Sub-title: Labourers fired by the Department of Fisheries for reporting alleged corruption have tried in vain to seek redress from the Yangon Region government.
Description: "LABOUR disputes are common, and often volatile, in Yangon, thanks to burgeoning manufacturing and trading sectors, personnel-heavy government and company offices, and the inconsistent application of labour laws. A steady stream of rural to urban migration feeds a labour pool that is beyond the government’s ability to track, and the overburdening or bypassing of arbitration mechanisms prompts workers to take militant approaches. Direct action by workers can invite violent crackdowns, but it can also produce wins. One recent example is the sit-in protest outside the Yangon Region government compound staged by more than 200 workers from factories in Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar Township. This ended on October 23, two days after it had started, when Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein and regional Immigration and Human Resources Minister Daw Moe Moe Su Kyi met the workers and pledged to help resolve their disputes with their managers over the alleged violation of agreements on pay and unionisation. However, another group of workers who protested outside the gates of the regional government at the same time got the cold shoulder from the chief minister. Numbering about 50, they were daily wage labourers handling freight at a fish market in Yangon’s Kyimyindaing Township for the Department of Fisheries, which is under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation. When six of them complained in April that team leaders were extorting illegal placement fees from newly recruited workers, they were summarily fired by the department for inciting protest..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Frontier Myanmar" (Myanmar)
2019-11-22
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: Dolphins that work with fishermen on the Irrawaddy River are threatened by overfishing. An ecologist and a tour group are working to assure the survival of the critically endangered mammals and the fishermen’s livelihoods.
Description: "Dolphin whisperer U Aung Thinn taps a hand-carved stick on the side of his slender boat and patiently waits. As he spots the dolphins’ grey arches gracefully moving towards him, he gathers his fishing equipment. One of the dolphins flicks its tail out of the water, sending the signal for Thinn to cast his net. The mammals corral fish towards the boat. As the fish swarm into the net, the dolphins devour the inevitable overspill. However, like the dolphins, the future of Myanmar’s cooperative fishing is under threat. “The big difference is the fish population,” says 51-year-old Thinn. When he started fishing at the age of 12, his hauls were much heavier. “It’s difficult to compete with electrofishing now, and some people have to work in other jobs to make a living.” Thinn is one of about 60 remaining cooperative fishermen who work alongside the small pocket of Irrawaddy dolphins along this stretch of the Irrawaddy River close to Mandalay. The latest WWF count in February recorded 76 dolphins in Myanmar, where they are classified as critically endangered by the IUCN. Worldwide, they are also classified as endangered, with only about 3,000 of the species estimated to remain. Thinn’s father taught him how fishermen and dolphins can work together. Featuring in folktales that date back centuries, the method has seen generations of Burmese build a mutually beneficial relationship with the majestic water mammals..."
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Source/publisher: "South China Morning Post" (Hong Kong)
2019-11-14
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-14
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Description: "The government of Myanmar has targeted aquaculture as a solution to widespread malnutrition and rural poverty in the Southeast Asian nation. With its 2,000 kilometers of coastline, Myanmar has the potential to reach the production levels of its neighbor, Thailand, as a seafood producer, according to Kevin Fitzsimmons, a professor in the department of soil, water, and environmental science at the University of Arizona and director of the department’s international programs. The country has begun to market its seafood exports, including appearances at the annual Seafood Expo Global in Brussels, Belgium. And a new program, the Myanmar Sustainable Aquaculture Program (MYSAP), which was given EUR 25 million (USD 27.6 million) in funding by the European Union and German development agency GIZ, is specifically aiding in the country’s development of its aquaculture sector. Fitzsimmons has taken a two-year leave of absence to work on MYSAP. Fitzsimmons, who previously worked on a USAID supported project from 2015 to 2017 to develop sustainable aquaculture in Myanmar, talked to Seafoodsource about the potential of Myanmar’s aquaculture sector and the environmental and investment challenges the country faces in its aquaculture-related efforts. SeafoodSource: Is there sufficient investment in Myanmar to realize the kind of aquaculture developments needed to satisfy demand and nutrition requirements as envisioned in the MYSAP project outline? Fitzsimmons: The project is able to make some investment, but the vast majority of investment is coming from domestic Myanmar funds. The demand for seafood is met at a basic level, but interest in fishes other than carps is great. Most of the new production is focused on these other species..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "SeafoodSource"
2019-11-11
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-14
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Sub-title: Europe is in talks with Myanmar to increase seafood imports. It cannot ignore the widespread slavery within the industry
Description: "While forced labour and slavery in the fishing industry in Thailand and other parts of the world have been brought to light in recent years, the fishing industry in Myanmar has received less attention. This is because fish caught there is mostly sold to local markets, but this may be about to change. Myanmar’s seafood businesses are increasingly seeking export markets, including the EU. And unless the EU responds to the clear evidence of widespread slavery and brutal conditions in Myanmar’s fishing industry, Europe could face another slavery scandal. Fishing in Myanmar’s Gulf of Mottama is dangerous business. Hours are long and conditions are harsh. Thousands of people died during Cyclone Nargis in 2008. But even outside such catastrophic events deaths are not uncommon. One fisherman we spoke to told us he has seen two colleagues decapitated with nets during his working life. But it’s a lucrative business too. Between September and May up to 50,000 men work to catch around 10,000 tonnes of fish, mostly shrimp. The owners are believed to yield a healthy profit – especially when the raft is crewed using slave labour. We spoke with raft workers in five communities in the Irrawaddy Delta as they waited ashore for the weather to calm. They told us about physical confinement on the rafts for months at a time and excessive working hours, with fishermen working 16 hours, every day, for nine months. We heard about routine use of violence, including rumours of murder of fishermen by supervisors. The employment conditions of all of the raft fishers that we spoke to fitted the international definition of slavery..."
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Source/publisher: "The Guardian" (UK)
2019-11-12
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-13
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Description: "A Bangladeshi fisherman was shot dead and another was injured allegedly by Myanmar’s Border Guard Police on the Naf river in Cox’s Bazar’s Teknaf upazila yesterday. The incident happened when the two men went fishing in the morning, locals claimed. The dead was identified as Noor Mohammad, 38, while the injured was Abul Kalam, 32, both of East Moheshkhalia Para in Teknaf. Lieutenant Colonel Md Foisal Hasan, commanding officer of BGB-2, said a team of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) found Noor Mohammad’s body and a bullet-hit Abul Kalam near sluice gate No 5. Abul Kalam was first taken to Teknaf Upazila Health Complex and later shifted to Cox’s Bazar General Hospital. Noor’s body was sent for an autopsy. He left behind his wife, four daughters and a son. Local Union Parishad member Jahed Hossain claimed the incident took place when the two were setting up nets in the Naf river..."
Source/publisher: "The Daily Star" (Bangladesh)
2019-11-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-01
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Description: "Villagers living near the site of a proposed deep-sea port in the town of Kyaukphyu in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state fear losses as the joint project with China gets under way, with fishermen already restricted from access to the sea, sources say. With ship traffic increasing in the area of the proposed port, residents of 20 villages nearby may now fish only in a restricted area, and many have lost their livelihoods, one villager told RFA’s Myanmar Service. “Now, we are allowed to work only in one small area,” the villager named Lay Myint said. “But even with this, our families are experiencing many difficulties.” “In my village, many have lost their jobs, and we’ve become dejected,” he said. Part of a planned Special Economic Zone (SEZ) covering over 4,200 acres, the deep-sea port in Kyaukphyu is an important part of China’s “One Belt, One Road” development strategy, giving Beijing access to the Bay of Bengal as an alternative route for oil imports..."
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Source/publisher: "Radio Free Asia (RFA)" (USA)
2019-08-23
Date of entry/update: 2019-10-05
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Description: "Global climate change and fisheries depleted by industrial fishing operations are forcing small fishermen in Dawei to invest in larger boats that can venture into deeper water. But Myanmar law limits the size of fishing boats, preventing local fishermen from investing in the larger boats they need to fish in the best areas. This week, in partnership with Dawei Watch, Doh Athan speaks with local fishermen forced to either give up their livelihoods, or break the law..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Frontier Myanmar" (Myanmar) via Dohathan
2019-09-30
Date of entry/update: 2019-10-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Sustainable aquaculture in Spain, rechargeable 'e-trikes' and a methane-cutting diet for Australia's cows. At Al Jazeera English, we focus on people and events that affect people's lives. We bring topics to light that often go under-reported, listening to all sides of the story and giving a 'voice to the voiceless.' Reaching more than 270 million households in over 140 countries across the globe, our viewers trust Al Jazeera English to keep them informed, inspired, and entertained. Our impartial, fact-based reporting wins worldwide praise and respect. It is our unique brand of journalism that the world has come to rely on. We are reshaping global media and constantly working to strengthen our reputation as one of the world's most respected news and current affairs channels..."
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Source/publisher: "Al Jazeera" (Qatar)
2012-04-07
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-26
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Description: "Myanmar's fishery export reached 544,533 tons worth 667 million U.S. dollars in the first 11 months (October-August) of the current fiscal year 2018-19, up 8,137 tons or 15.78 million dollars compared with the corresponding period of 2017-18, according to the Myanmar Fisheries Federation (MFF) Friday. As Myanmar had banned fishing in no fishing season, the Fishery Department called for adopting good breeding practices to promote fishery export to neighboring countries. Myanmar exports fishery products such as fish, prawn and crab to over 40 countries and regions including China, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Thailand. At present, the authorities are exerting efforts in fishery resource conservation as well as sustainable development in the country's fishery sector. Meanwhile, the MFF is planning to set up a public company to run livestock breeding and feed processing businesses for the development of the sector..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Xinhua" (China)
2019-09-20
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Topic: fisheries, fishing, Ministry of Agriculture Livestock and Irrigation, Food and Agriculture Organization, Tanintharyi Region, Myeiks, muggling, informal economy, Ranong, corruption
Sub-title: A precipitous decline in fishery resources prompted a three-month ban on all offshore fishing in Myanmar waters, but members of industry and civil society groups say more needs to be done to combat rampant illegal fishing.
Topic: fisheries, fishing, Ministry of Agriculture Livestock and Irrigation, Food and Agriculture Organization, Tanintharyi Region, Myeiks, muggling, informal economy, Ranong, corruption
Description: "OFFSHORE BOATS and their crews returned to work on September 1 at the end of a three-month suspension of activities off Myanmar’s entire coastline during the breeding season for fish and shrimp, but the outlook for the marine catch is grim. In previous years, suspensions were partial, and last year applied to 70 percent of vessels, but this year was the first time a ban applied to all offshore commercial fishing. The Department of Fisheries, under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation, imposed the total ban because of a drastic decline in the marine fishery catch. There has been a 90 percent decline in Myanmar’s marine fishery resources in the past 40 years, according to research conducted by the department in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization under the EAF-Nansen Programme, which is funded by the Norwegian government. U Myint Zin Htoo, the department’s deputy director-general, said further research would be conducted to determine what effect the three-month closure had on fish numbers. “We hope the closure will lead to a significant increase in stocks,” he told Frontier in late August, suggesting that the publication of findings could take some time. Frontier visited Tanintharyi Region’s Myeik District in July, in the middle of the closed season, to learn more about the decline in fishery stocks and illegal fishing off the coast – subjects that are often raised by the region’s MPs in the regional and national parliaments..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Frontier Myanmar" (Myanmar)
2019-09-17
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-17
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Myanmar authorities are taking measures to stop fish and prawn treated with formalin and chemicals from entering into the Yangon market, according to Yangon Region Fishery Department on Friday. Currently, fish and prawn imported from Thailand through the Myawady border gate are cheaper than locally produced ones, said U Hla Htay, deputy head of the department, on Thursday at a meeting with other concerned departments. He called on the Department of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to check if the imported fish and prawn are treated with formalin and chemicals, which are warned of being unsafe for consumption. Over the last two years, the Myanmar Fishery Department seized illegal shipment of foreign fish and prawn entering Yangon through Myawady..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Xinhua"
2019-09-13
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-13
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Fishery workers in Kyonepyaw and Lemyethna townships in Irrawaddy Region staged a protest against the regional agriculture minister on Monday in Pathein, the regional capital, over what they claim is an unfair distribution of fishing rights. In a longstanding practice that dates back to the colonial period, the rights to fish in lakes in Myanmar are auctioned off by the government to private businessmen on a yearly basis. Wealthy fishery owners have long monopolized the fishing lakes, with poor laborers generally working for a daily wage. But in recent years, fishery workers have formed cooperatives and started bidding for rights. This has been widely supported by local communities, as the increased income helps to improve living standards. Generally, authorities issue two types of permit. A Type 1 permit allows the holder to fish in a lake for one year, while a Type 2 permit is issued for one to three years and allows the holder to breed fish in the lake..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy"
2019-09-10
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-11
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Description: "Growing demand and industrial fishing techniques are pushing some populations of cod and tuna to the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, millions of tonnes of less marketable fish are used as fertiliser, fish food, or simply discarded. According to some experts, 90 percent of the world's fish stocks are being fished at or beyond their sustainable limits. Soleshare, a tiny startup based in east London, is challenging this worrying trend by encouraging its members to do one thing – eat a wider variety of sustainably-caught fish. Sylvia Rowley joins a fisherman off the coast of Newhaven and takes part in a SoleShare workshop designed to get customers hooked on sustainable seafood..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Al Jazeera English"
2014-12-16
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Join our FISHBIO biologist on his journey with Fauna & Flora International to study the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar. Subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one, and visit http://fishbio.com/ for the latest news on fisheries research. Also connect with us on our social media sites to share any fish related questions and ideas, or to simply say hi!..."
Source/publisher: "FISHBIO"
2018-05-02
Date of entry/update: 2019-08-16
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Introduction of the Project; SAEP in CDZ, a cooperation project between Department of Fisheries and JICA has started in March 2014. The objective is to improve the livelihood of rural communities by promoting low-input/simple aquaculture techniques. The Project also establishes autonomous extension systems among farmers by rearing “core farmers” toward "Farmer to Farmer Extesnsion Appraoch", who are local seed producers, to supply healthy fish seeds as well as to disseminate technical information to their neighboring farmers in the Central Dry Zone of Myanmar. Content: Introduce the benefits of small-scale aquaculture in order to increase the intention of potential farmers to start small-scale aquaculture. The farmers were interviewed about when and why they started aquaculture, benefits about aquaculture, the current situation of aquaculture. The major benefits mentioned by the farmers in the interviews were about earning major/extra income and for family consumption. Many farmers said they started to get profit by getting technical knowledge about aquaculture as well as proper fish seed through the Project activities..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: JICAChannel02
2018-05-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-27
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: Volume ll: Ayeyarwady Futures
Description: "WWF Myanmar, through the River in the Economy project, brought together people from diverse backgrounds, to imagine what the future of the Ayeyarwady Basin could look like. Some futures look good, some futures look bad. Some futures are good for a few, other futures are disastrous for the ecosystems that keep us alive and resilient. WWF Myanmar undertook this process to better understand the drivers of change that help or hinder our progress towards an equitably beneficial future. By imagining the possible directions the future could take, we can imagine what sort of actions we need to take. This is to make sure we collectively follow the future that we want, and not the future that we do not want. This report has been developed from the culmination of workshops in 2017 and 2018, collecting the perspectives of government, civil society, academia and business in the Ayeyarwady Basin, including the Delta, Middle Basin, Lower Basin and Chindwin Basin. 103 participants attended these workshops. They represented: INTRODUCTION This is the second volume of a two-part series of reports highlighting perspectives of diverse stakeholder across the Ayeyarwady Basin. The first workshops were centred on creating a common understanding of the Ayeyarwady River Basin and the risks and opportunities associated with living in the basin. The second series of workshops were then focused on the future, and what the possible development pathways in the future may look like..."
Source/publisher: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
2018-08-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 4.11 MB
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Sub-title: VOLUME 1: RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PEOPLE LIVING AND WORKING IN THE BASIN
Description: "The Ayeyarwady is at the heart of many activities in Myanmar. In each of its sub basins, a unique set of needs and risks is associated with the river. As part of the WWF-funded Ayeyarwady River in the Economy Project, a series of workshops were held in each of these sub basins (upper, Chindwin, middle, lower and delta) to identify the goods and services provided by the river, but also to identify how these demands are putting the river at risk, and ultimately the sectors themselves, which depend on a healthy Ayeyarwady. 30 participants attended each workshop. They represented a diversity of backgrounds; academia, government, private sector and civil society. They identified the goods and services provided to their sub basins that depend on their stretch of river. These include provisioning services such as water for irrIgation, regulating services such as flood recession ponds for fish spawning, supporting services such as safe habitats for biodiversity, and cultural services for tourism, as well as spiritual sites along the basin. They were also asked to identify how these sectors providing goods and services are impacting upon the river system, creating risks for the stretch of river in their region. The top risks identified in each sub-basin are shown in the following figure. These include flooding, mining, bank erosion, pollution, sedimentation, navigation challenges, river morphology changes, and fish species degradation. In addition to the individual risks identified within each localized sub-basin, there are also interlinked risks from up to downstream. For instance, increased mining or deforestation in the upper catchment may shift the sediment dynamics downstream, causing bank erosion or sedimentation. As the Ayeyarwady flows through the country, hydropower dams trap sediment and may reduce the valuable ecosystem services provided to flood recession agriculture in its lower stretches. Because of this sedimentation the river widens and becomes more shallow, causing significant challenges for boats navigating the waters. The use of pesticides and fertilizers upstream also causes pollution for those using the river downstream. These are just a few of the ways that risks are transported geographically throughout the entire river basin. It is of paramount importance that economic development plans taking place, especially in the upper reaches of the Ayeyarwady and its tributaries, take into account their impacts on the users downstream. This includes not only water availability and quality, but also the timing of flows and sediment dynamics. For instance, the flooding risks identified by stakeholders in the lower basin may be due to a sediment deficit in the upper reaches. This in turn limits the flow of sediment to the delta, contributing to its sinking. The lack of sediment may be due to a number of factors including regulation of flows from dams, the trapping of actual sediment from dams or perhaps the extraction of sediment for the construction sector. Individually these impacts may be small, but cumulatively they may result in a vulnerable delta, the home of the majority of Myanmar’s population, infrastructure, and fish and rice production..."
Source/publisher: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
2018-05-11
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 1.97 MB
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Description: "The main rivers of Myanmar have been briefly described. The Ayeyarwady river system has been divided up into the Upper, Middle and Lower Ayeyarwady, leading into the Delta. The Chindwin is a large tributary of the Ayeyarwady and has been described separately, so that there are five main basins of the Ayeyarwady river system. The Thanlwin is described from the point of entry into Myanmar from China through to its estuary at Mawlamyine. It has a very different character to the Ayeyarwady system, being principally a narrow rock cut channel for most of its length. The Sittaung is a much smaller river system running from north to south between the two major river basins, before discharging into the Gulf of Mottama. The Myit Ma Hka and Bago river basins are two very small basins near Yangon between the Sittaung and Ayeyarwady. There are two coastal river basins, the Rakhine coastal basin consisting of a number of smaller rivers, including the Kaladan, Lemyo and Mayu rivers, with water arising in the Rakhine Yoma and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, and in the Tanintharyi coastal basin which contains the Tanintharyi and Lenya rivers, flowing into the Andaman Sea. In the absence of strong data bases to describe the ecological value of the different river systems in Myanmar, the approach has been taken of attributing importance of different aspects to a standard dataset classifying all of the 36 different types of river reach found in Myanmar rivers. River reach rarity according to the total lengths of river reach is taken as an important ecological attribute, as are the areas around confluences and rivers flowing through limestone karst geology. Reaches lying within known areas where endemic fish species are found, including areas such as the Rakhine and Bago Yomas, headwaters of the Ayeyarwady and Chindwin, Indawgyi and Inle Lake areas and in the Tanintharyi coastal rivers. The important river and wetland areas have been noted including those identified from the Key Biodiversity Areas, Ramsar and potential Natural World Heritage Sites and wetlands surveyed during the 2004 Wetland Inventory of Myanmar. The IBAT and IUCN Redlist databases have been used to identify areas important for threatened species of turtles, molluscs, aquatic insects, crustacea and aquatic plants. Similarly, the likely presence of threatened fish species in different sub-basins has been used to identify importance of river reaches using the IBAT and Redlist databases. The importance of migratory fish such as Hilsa, eels, and Tor species are recognized and the mainstem reaches of each river receive recognition of the importance of ecosystem connectivity. Areas where aquatic mammals are found such as the Irrawady Dolphin and otter species have been described. The process provides an identification of the ecological sensitivity of the different river reaches in all the rivers in Myanmar, except for the Rakhine Coastal Basin, where the primary river reach database does not extend. These rivers are described qualitatively. The ecosystem services provided by Myanmar’s rivers have been described qualitatively. In particular, detail has been provided on the fisheries provisioning services, which is one of the most important ecosystem services provided by the rivers. Information is provided on the freshwater and inshore fisheries and aquaculture and their contributions to livelihoods and nutrition of people living along the rivers. The distribution of the leasehold areas for commercial fishing by township is provided. Note is taken of the increasing recognition of the role of women in the fisheries sector. An analysis of the distribution of fish species which have different utilization is provided – commercial uses, subsistence and their potential as ornamental species. Other provisioning services include timber and textile materials from riparian vegetation, and the use of molluscs, crustacea and turtle species for food. Regulating services include hydrological services such as the seasonal flows patterns, groundwater recharge, flood alleviation in the floodplains, sediment transport and sand and gravel extraction, and maintenance of water quality. Supporting services include nutrient transport from the upper reaches to the floodplains and delta, biodiversity support providing ecosystems and habitats for the different lifecycles of fish and other aquatic organisms, and the river connectivity, which is so important for migratory species. Cultural services include the cultural importance of the rivers of Myanmar to its peoples, and of specific features such as confluences e.g. at Myitsone, deep pools, rapids and water falls. Cultural services include navigation and tourism, especially on the Ayeyarwady..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: World Bank
2019-01-30
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 3.78 MB
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Description: "Fisheries and aquaculture make a significant contribution to Myanmar’s economy. The fisheries sector contributes roughly 2 percent of Myanmar’s gross domestic product (GDP), 50 percent of animal protein consumption, 6 percent of employment—rising to as high as 34 percent in some coastal areas—and up to 56 percent of state/regional government revenue. Marine fisheries, freshwater fisheries, and aquaculture contribute to production in roughly equal proportions, for a total annual production of 3 million tons. Fisheries’ contributions to economic output and employment in Myanmar still lag behind other countries in the region. For instance, the aquaculture sector alone contributes more to the GDP of Bangladesh and Vietnam (at more than 3 percent and more than 5 percent, respectively) than the entire fisheries sector’s contribution to GDP in Myanmar. There is a scarcity of scientific data on which to base the management of Myanmar’s fisheries. Official catch estimates show an inexorable rise in marine fisheries’ production, but these are contradicted by stock assessment data suggesting that between 1979 and 2013 pelagic stocks fell by as much as 90 percent and demersal stocks by around 50 percent..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: World Bank
2019-06-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 2.04 MB
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Description: "Myanmar’s forest and timber sector has been central to the country’s economy and society, particularly over the last century. Myanmar’s forests contain some of the most valued species in the world—particularly rosewood, ironwood, and teak. Myanmar also has one of the most longstanding forest management systems in the tropics. Today, despite reduced timber extraction revenues, wood industry still generates over 8 percent of formal government revenues. Beyond timber, rural society largely depends on non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and agroforestry for food, medicine, and wood fuel, which is by far the most important energy source in rural Myanmar, with between 60 percent and 80 percent of communities relying on this source. Some of Myanmar’s forests also form some of the world’s most critically important biodiversity ‘hotspots’. The importance of Myanmar’s forests is not limited to their wood products alone: • Forest governance and the peace process are directly intertwined: Two-thirds of Myanmar’s remaining forested areas are managed by ethnic groups, in many cases through customary tenure systems, with much of this forest located in conflict areas. It is evident that inclusive forest governance and natural resource management and empowering local agents will contribute to the national peace-building process and reduce conflict. • Community forestry (CF) and smallholder plantations are financially and socially viable and can meaningfully contribute to rural income generation, provided the appropriate institutions, rights, incentives, and technical support are in place. Community-based forestry programs represent international best practice, providing tenure to communities to stimulate investments and creating trust, income, and business opportunities. • Wood processing can enhance exports and rural jobs creation. Myanmar currently loses economic value from limited or wasteful low-quality timber processing of some of the world’s most valuable timber. Looking to other countries in the region, Vietnam invested heavily in high value-added processing and forest small and medium enterprises (SMEs) over the last 10 years, and today is the fifth largest exporter of wood products with revenue exceeding that of Myanmar more than twentyfold in value. The looming global supply gap for wood products will most likely boost this sector even more in the future. • At the same time, forests and mangroves provide significant ecosystem services for water catchment, habitat for flora and fauna, carbon storage, soil nutrient recovery, and increasingly important disaster risk protection. With accelerating climate change, forests’ role in both mitigation and, more crucially, adaptation will be increasingly essential (improving basin-level hydrological functions, especially maintaining moisture recycling and rainfall and reducing droughts and floods), especially for downstream/lowland populations. In the years before the democratic transition, forest areas were largely over-logged to maximize timber revenues with little consideration for sustainability, which resulted in widespread degradation of the Permanent Forest Estate (PFE). Illegal logging and corrupt practices are still ongoing, but in 2014, a log export ban (alongside other policy measures) was imposed to stop the plundering of production forests. Since then, the forest and timber sector is undergoing a series of reforms to better control and manage the resources in a more socially inclusive and transparent way. Although the current direction is positive, and there is high political ownership by the government and society, progress is still slow..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: World Bank
2019-06-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 3.02 MB
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Description: "Hydropower development in Myanmar has potentially wide-ranging impacts. Hydropower development in Myanmar is taking place in the context of sustained and rapid economic growth over approximately the last two decades. This has been driven predominantly by growth in the industrial sector, although growth in the agricultural and service sectors has also been important. Extractive and natural-resourced based industries have been an important component of this growth with natural gas, minerals and timber comprising the lion’s share of exports. The economics baseline develops a broad strategic picture of relevant economic sectors, highlights development and environmental issues, identifies interactions with hydropower development and potential cumulative impacts of hydropower and other economic development. Based upon consultations throughout potentially hydropower affected areas of the country, five economic sectors were identified as having important linkages with hydropower that the SEA should investigate, these were i) the Power sector; ii) Agriculture; iii) Forestry; iv) Mining; and, v)Transportation. Power sector - Hydropower has significant direct economic benefits. It represents an important part of grid-based electricity generation, accounting for around 3.5 GW of installed capacity and 72% of grid-based electricity generation in 2014. The value of the electricity generated per year is best estimated in terms of the value of alternative supply of electricity, which would make the approximately 6,920 GWh generated by hydropower in 2014 worth USD 735 million.1 Agriculture - agriculture has expended relatively rapidly since the 1990s with significant increases in land under cultivation, irrigable area and cropping intensity. The use of agricultural inputs has also grown rapidly with increases in the use of agricultural chemicals and mechanisation in particular. These changes have led to significant increases in agricultural productivity over the last two decades. However, in recent years value-added growth in the sector has been low. Significant interactions between hydropower and agriculture include: • Reduced nutrient transport; • Reduced deltaic stability; • Increased erosion downstream of HP plants; • Unseasonal changes in water flow or availability; • Loss of riverbank gardens associated with changes in flow regime and/or sedimentation; • Loss of agricultural land in area inundated by HP plants with a reservoir; • Loss of access to land in watershed protection area; • Reduced flooding of plants managed for flood reduction; • Increased water availability for irrigation if plants managed for multiple use; • Improved electricity supply; • Deforestation and knock-on consequences for other sectors (such as flooding, erosion and soil degradation) and biodiversity loss; • Increased pollution from agricultural run-off compounding reservoir water-quality issues; and, • Increased soil degradation, erosion and sedimentation caused by agricultural practices. Forestry - forestry represents a relatively small and declining share of GDP. Although value-added has grown considerably since the early 2000s, in recent years production in the sector has declined, in part due to policies banning the export of raw timber. Illegally exported timber, not accounted for in official statistics, is typically smuggled across the border to China, remains important. The key development and environmental issue associated with the forest sector is deforestation and unsustainable use of timber resources. Important interactions with hydropower development were identified as: • Clearance of forest from inundation areas and transmission line corridors; • Deforestation through better access to forests, through road and other infrastructure, including during the plant construction period; and • Increased watershed erosion due to deforestation and sedimentation in reservoir..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: World Bank
2019-01-30
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
Format : pdf
Size: 2.56 MB
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Description: ''Rural communities in Myanmar have numerous economic, environmental, and social opportunities but also face challenges as they seek a clear and solid pathway to development. The Government of Myanmar (GoM), as well as several development and donor organizations, have recognized the potential of community forestry (CF) to address many of these challenges. This recognition has taken the form of targets for CF development (for example, 2.27 million acres [919,000 hectares (ha)] of community forests by fiscal year 2030/31), legal frameworks (for example, Community Forestry Instructions [CFIs], 1995 and 2016), and programs by state and non-state actors (NSAs). The first steps in the development of a CF program in the country started in December 1995 with the issuance of the CFI. The early years of CF, which can be defined as an emergent phase, were limited by legislative and institutional challenges. However, recent years have seen the program develop with focus moving from protection, with limited livelihood opportunities for communities with tenure to their forests, to livelihood and enterprise development, recognizing that forests will only be protected if local communities are allowed and able to tangibly benefit from their forests (for example, revised CFI, 2016 and CF Strategy Action Plan, 2018–2020). This work examines the state of CF and community forest enterprises (CFE) in Myanmar, assessing their impacts, exploring the challenges to and opportunities for their upscaling, and from these putting forward a series of recommendations to ensure that the program sustainably delivers for forest communities as well as Myanmar as a whole...''
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: World Bank
2019-06-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 5.86 MB
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Description: "Myanmar's gross domestic product (GDP) was US$67 billion in 20171 and has been growing at a high rate of 7.2 percent in 2013-2018. The GDP growth rate is expected to be 6.2 percent in the 2018/19 fiscal year (World Bank Group 2018). Most of the contribution to GDP growth in the past five years has stemmed from industry (1.9 percentage points from manufacturing and 0.7 percentage points from other industries) and services (3.9 percentage points). Myanmar has relied heavily on natural resource exploitation to sustain economic growth, and serious environmental issues are emerging, underlining the importance of transparent and robust Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system. There are growing concerns around the impacts of the large-scale development, including deforestation, depletion of inland and coastal fisheries, land degradation, flooding and landslides, biodiversity loss, and the deterioration of water and air quality (IFC 2017; Rai6er, Samson, and Nam 2015). A functioning EIA system is critical in identifying and managing the potential impacts of large-scale development and striking the balance between economic development, environmental conservation, and social inclusion. Balancing economic growth and environmental protection remains a critical policy challenge. Myanmar was ranked 171st in the World Bank Group Doing Business 2019 report; in terms of environmental governance, Myanmar scored 138th out of 180 countries on the Yale Environmental Performance Index in 2018. There is a need to improve business regulations while increasing efficiency and effectiveness of EIA, monitoring, and compliance systems that support environmental and social (E&S) sustainability. This also underlines the need for effective public participation in environment and natural resources (ENR) management, which an effective EIA process can facilitate. At the policy level, the Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan (MSDP) (2018-2030) and National Environment Policy (2019) provide the foundation for mainstreaming ENR into development planning. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) and its Environmental Conservation Department (ECD) have also set ambitious targets to recruit more than 19,000 staff by 2025 and establish 73 offices at the district level and 365 offices at the township level. Internally, they have also recogni6ed the urgent need to strengthen EIA systems. Significant progress has been achieved in recent years by the Government of Myanmar (GoM) in establishing the legal and regulatory framework for environmental management. The GoM has introduced the Environmental Conservation Law (ECL) (2012), supported by the Environment Conservation Rules (ECR) (2014) and EIA Procedure (2015). The government has also set up an EIA Division to oversee the review and approval of EIAs, Initial Environmental Examinations (IEEs), and Environmental Management Plans (EMPs). Over the last three years, the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Myanmar Center for Responsible Business (MCRB) and other development partners have invested in building the capacity of ECD through support to training and development of sector-specific guidelines..."
Source/publisher: World Bank
2019-06-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 2.45 MB
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Description: "The fisheries and aquaculture sector in Myanmar is critically important to the country’s food and nutrition security and economy. Climate change is forecast to have a significant impact on the sector. For capture fisheries (marine and inland) these impacts include changes in sea surface temperature, higher inland water temperature, changes in ocean currents, changes in the frequency of El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, sea level rise and changing levels of rain and water availability. The aquaculture sector is also exposed to hazards such as salt-water intrusion, flooding of ponds, shortages in water supply, invasive species and ad hoc development planning altering local ecosystem dynamics and undermining their resilience, integrity and functionality. The fisheries sector and dependent livelihoods are also under stress from a range of other factors such as Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, overfishing and pollution. Myanmar is vulnerable to extreme climate events, which have caused significant loss of life, damage to infrastructure and also impacted fishers and fish farmers’ livelihoods..."
Source/publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2018-12-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-18
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 440.14 KB
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Description: "The Asia-Pacific region is recognized for its important fisheries’ habitats and abundance of aquatic resources; allowing the capture fisheries and aquaculture sectors to provide vital livelihoods and food security throughout the region. However, the resources and the sustainability of the fisheries are being threatened by inadequate, unsustainable fisheries and aquaculture management, high fishing pressures, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), improper pesticides and feed use, and competition with other users of the coasts and aquatic resources and zones; leading to a state of overfishing and degradation of habitats and water quality and other negative impacts to ecosystem services. Although sharing stocks of important commercial species countries are struggling to manage resources and transboundary stocks through urgently required collaborative fisheries management planning. In addition, because of their location and type of livelihoods, fishers, fish farmers and coastal communities are directly affected by the lack of uncertainty, changes in species and their distributions, impacts on production and post-harvest practices, sea level rise, coastal erosion and other natural hazards exacerbated by climate change, such as toxic algal blooms, floods, strong wave surges and cyclones that destroy infrastructure and make the act of fishing and fish farming more dangerous. Through its extensive portfolio of TCP, UTF, GCP (bilateral and GEF) and the Blue Growth initiative, the FAO supports and promotes the responsible and sustainable development of fisheries and aquaculture as guided by the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Our proven and successful work ranges from the development and implementation of International Plans of Actions on IUU, fishing capacity, sharks, and seabirds; the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries and Aquaculture; efficient and safe post-harvest practices; all the way through to responsible trade and marketing of fish products. The FAO fosters and supports the work of regional fisheries bodies, such as the FAO Indian Ocean Tuna Commission and Asia Pacific Fisheries Commission. The FAO also plays a key role in the development of recent global fisheries instruments, such as the binding FAO Port State Measures Agreement and the Voluntary Guidelines in support of Small Scale Fisheries. New, GEF 7 projects are able to build upon existing development strategies (DoF, etc) and efforts of a range of partners, including but not limited to: Regional Bodies: FAO Asia-Pacific Fisheries Commission (APFIC), Bay of Bengal-IGO, The Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA), Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC), Mekong River Commission (MRC), Pacific Community (SPC), Secretariat of the Pacific (SPC), Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), RPOA-IUU, Regional Seas Programmes (COBSEA/PEMSEA) Private Sector including CP, Thai Union, Mars, MSC and ASC..."
Source/publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2018-05-13
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-17
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 239.49 KB
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Description: "Myanmar’s economy relies on agriculture, including fisheries and forestry, and the sector accounts for nearly half of the total economic output of the country and employs more than 60 percent of the total labor force. There are enormous resources for the expansion and growth of aquaculture and culture based fisheries, nevertheless, the full potential for further development of its contribution to food security, employment and rural and national economy has not yet been fully realized and documented in Myanmar. In the past, tilapia species were cultured in shallow, narrow and temporary water bodies and were targeted only for rural populations. Nowadays the tilapia, particularly hybrid and mono sex species, are widely cultured in intensive farms as a result of the high demand from local consumers and an increasing demand from restaurants and barbecue shops. Tilapia culture in Myanmar is constrained by seed production and seed quality as well as other management problems. Government hatcheries in 2012–2013 produced freshwater fingerlings and the main species were rohu (549.20 million), tarpian (127.86 million) and common carp (45.58 million), whereas the tilapia seed production was 13.06 million, only 1.65% of total seed production of different kinds of freshwater fish species. FAO has been involving in earlier normative field work of tilapia farming, in addition, recently implemented a number of country field projects to improve seed production and farming practices of tilapia and other inland fish species in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The implementation of the project will greatly benefit from the experiences, knowledge and lessons gained from the implementation of the past relevant country projects..."
Source/publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2019-07-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-17
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
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Description: "Fisheries co-management projects, bringing together fisher communities, government, nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and research organizations, represent the best opportunity for developing and sustaining inland and delta fisheries in Myanmar. Each partner brings different competencies, field-tested experiences and an extensive network of communities, service providers and trading networks into the process. Vulnerability can be defined as the extent to which an activity or a group of persons is exposed to a hazard, and also the extent to which they are able to respond or adapt. It also includes socio-economic characteristics (e.g. poverty and employment rates, age of the population, power dynamics). The Participatory rural appraisal – Vulnerability study of Ayeyarwady Delta fishing communities in Myanmar and social protection opportunities (PRA-V study) seeks to inform fisheries management and social protection processes of the key vulnerability issues faced by fishers at the five pilot sites selected for fisheries co-management. The five co-management sites are located in: Labutta, Pyapon, Maubin, Hinthada and Thabaung townships (Figure 2). All sites have a t least one villa ge t ha t is implementing a rudimentary form of fisheries co-management. Two of the sites (Labutta and Pyapon) are in coastal saline areas, two are in freshwater areas (Hinthada and Thabaung) while the fifth site (Maubin) is in an area inland that alternates between freshwater and brackish conditions..."
Creator/author: Aung Kyaw Thein, Richard Gregory, Michael Akester, Florence Poulain, Romain Langeard
Source/publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2019-01-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-16
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 2.8 MB
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Description: "The fisheries and aquaculture sector in Myanmar is an essential activity for the provision of food and livelihoods to a large number of people in rural areas and contributing to economic activity for the employment. Since 1905, Myanmar has developed legislations for fishery management and the fishing industry of the country. However, in the 1980s, the introduction of trawling method in coastal waters caused the considerable conflict between traditional fishermen and trawlers. This led to the amending of the fisheries law to provide a more comprehensive legal framework to manage fisheries in national waters. In recent years, FAO has been noting a continuous and impressive increase of the capture and aquaculture production officially reported by Myanmar. Marine catches reported in 2013 increased 5.5 times more than those in 1996 and inland water catch statistics have been growing at a pace of 15.5% per year since 1999. In addition, species breakdown of capture fishery statistics is very poor, with marine catches reported only by 3 highly aggregated specie items and no breakdown at all for inland water catches. Knowledge of the status and trends of capture fisheries, including socio-economic aspects, is a key to develop a policy and for better decision-making and responsible fisheries management. It is necessary at the national level for the maintenance of the food security and for describing social and economic benefits of fisheries. Those data is also essential for assessing the validity of fisheries policy and for tracking the performance of fisheries management. Considering an increase in the number of countries taking up a scheme of decentralized management of fisheries, more accurate and updating information should reach to the community level and result in a better-informed public that supports efforts to manage fisheries and aquatic resources in a responsible manner..."
Source/publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2019-04-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-14
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 514.33 KB
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Description: ''Myanmar’s fishery sector is increasingly celebrated for its potential, and the country’s role as a major international source of fishery products (through wild-capture as well as aquaculture) is expected to expand further with investment in the years to come. Dramatic changes are reshaping the small scale-fishery sector, driven by new investment and diverse government policies oriented toward opening up the country. Amidst all this, the voices and aspirations of those who are among those being most affected by these dynamics – men and women in the small-scale fishery sector – are mostly invisible. The SSF Guidelines, along with the VG Tenure, committed States to the cross-cutting principle of gender equality and all parties to “support small-scale fishing communities, in particular to indigenous peoples, women and those relying on fishing for subsistence, including, as appropriate, the technical and financial assistance to organize, maintain, exchange and improve traditional knowledge of aquatic living resources and fishing techniques, and upgrade knowledge on aquatic ecosystems” (para. 11.7). This paper traces the process and reflects on the findings of the first step in such a journey currently being undertaken jointly with several small scale fishing communities and local support organizations in Mon State and Tanintharyi Region in Myanmar, to test using the SSF Guidelines in settings marked by major pressures from various forms of control over key resources, for agribusiness, large-scale extraction of oil and minerals and for special economic zones...''
Creator/author: Maria Belen Angeles
Source/publisher: Transnational Institute (TNI)
2019-03-12
Date of entry/update: 2019-03-13
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 618.9 KB
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Description: ''One of Myanmar's most important lakes and cultural sites is under assault from development and climate change. One man is trying to turn things around. Listen to the radio story: https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-03-10/myanmars-inle-lake-just-one-small-body-water-man-dedicating-his-life-saving-it ...''
Creator/author: Katie Arnold
2017-03-11
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
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Description: "The fishing industry has been a significant driver of Myanmar?s economic growth in the last decade. However, Myanmar?s fishing industry has simultaneously been associated with alleged child labour issues. Human Rights Now (HRN), a Tokyobased international human rights NGO, sent a fact-finding mission in July 2017 to investigate the alleged child labour situation in the Myanmar fishing industry. Over the course of five visits from 6 July 2017 to 25 July 2017, the fact-finding mission conducted interviews with labourers at San Pya market, one of the largest wholesale fish markets in Yangon, as well as at two villages across the Yangon River, Aye and Ba Done Nyunt villages. The fact-finding team conducted interviews with 19 people, including 12 child labourers1. While acknowledging the limited scope of the fact-finding mission, HRN uncovered abject working conditions and the use of child labour in the fishing sector in Myanmar. Child participation in the Myanmar labour force is widespread due to poverty, little knowledge about the issue, shortcomings in the country?s education system and a lack of services aimed at poor children and families.2 Furthermore, Myanmar lacks a coherent legal framework against the practice of child labour and, simultaneously, for the protection of young workers..."
Source/publisher: Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business via "Human Right Now"
2018-10-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-10-26
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 961.01 KB
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Description: " Myanmar exported over 560,000 tonnes of fishery products in 2017-18, the highest in 20 years, according to data provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation (MOALI). At those levels, the exports are worth $711 million. That could more than double to $2 billion-$3 billion within the next two years, if the right technology, resources and equipment are deployed, said U Htay Myint, chair of the Myanmar Fishery Federation. This includes developing ponds for aquaculture, processing factories and cold storage facilities. The Ministry of Planning and Finance has agreed to provide funds of up to K100 billion to develop the supply chain and modernise the aquaculture process, U Htay Myint said. Earlier this year, MOALI launched dialogues for the drafting a National Aquaculture Development Plan to preserve the country?s fish supplies."
Source/publisher: "Myanmar Times"
2018-04-10
Date of entry/update: 2018-04-13
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: "...CONCLUSIONS The following conclusions can be drawn from this analysis: First, MADB is by far the most important source of loans for agriculture, and plays a crucial role in ensuring that most farmers have access to credit at affordable rates. Terms of repayment for MADB loans appear somewhat more flexible than is generally understood, particularly for monsoon loans, which have repayment periods that are two months longer on average than those for loans taken in dry season. (Repayment schedules for dry season loans are presumably more tightly restricted due to the Bank?s need to disperse the main tranche of monsoon loans from July onwards). Perhaps because a degree of flexibility exists, the share of farmers reporting the need to sell crops earlier than they preferred in order to meet MADB loan repayments was lower than expected. Second, informal lenders (predominantly relatives/ friends and moneylenders) are by far the most common sources of informal credit for agriculture, but are also among the most expensive. The least creditworthy agricultural households (those with the smallest landholdings and lowest per capita expenditures) are most heavily dependent on these sources, and thus face a double burden of limited resources and expensive debt. Loans from these two sources also dominate credit utilized for aquaculture. However, despite average operating costs much higher than those in agriculture, only 41% of households practicing aquaculture had accessed a loan for this purpose within the past 12 months, suggesting that the cost of informal credit may act as a disincentive to investment in the activity, likely resulting in sub-optimal productivity. Third, the prevalence of output-tied loans in agriculture is insignificant, with no loans of this type being provided by traders or input suppliers. In the case of aquaculture, such loans are available from fish traders, but only to large farms. Rather than being exploitative, as such arrangements are often perceived to be, these loans are advantageous to borrowers, because average loan sizes and loan durations are greater than for those from other informal sources, and average rates of interest are lower. Fourth, access to loans from microfinance institutions and cooperatives improved sharply between 2011 and 2016. The greater availability credit from these providers appears to be linked to a 12-percentage point reduction in the average rate of interest paid on loans taken from sources other than banks over this period. Although this is a very positive development, loans from these sources represent only a small share of that invested agriculture and aquaculture, suggesting potential to tailor them more effectively to meet the needs of farm households."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Michigan State University (MSU)-Food Security Policy Project Research Highlights Myanmar
2016-09-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-03-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 842.38 KB
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Description: "This note seeks to contribute to the ongoing debates around the revision of Myanmar?s 2012 Farmland Law. It summarizes key findings of research conducted in the main fish farming areas of Myanmar on the relationship between aquaculture (fish farming) and land use. It makes recommendations for the revision of land use regulations that would allow aquaculture to develop in a manner that benefits small producers and yields more equitable outcomes. Aquaculture is a high value activity in comparison with paddy, Myanmar?s most important crop in area terms. Average returns per acre from farming fish are several times higher than those from farming monsoon or dry season paddy ($655/acre versus $98/acre and $126/acre, respectively..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Michigan State University (MSU) & Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy
2017-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-03-13
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 419.47 KB
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Description: "The purpose of this policy brief is to provide national and state-level policymakers, private sector investors, civil society and donors with an analysis of the rural economy of Mon State and pathways to improved prosperity for its population. The analysis is based on a representative survey (the Mon State Rural Household Survey 2015) of 1680 rural households, which comprise 73% of Mon State?s 2 million residents, and extensive interviews with farmers, traders, processors, local leaders and government officials..."
Source/publisher: Michigan State University (MSU) & Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy
2016-07-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-03-13
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 209.47 KB
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Description: "....CONCLUSIONS Agricultural mechanization is already well advanced in the village tracts surveyed, almost completely replacing the use of draft cattle. Economic reforms and the growth in the non-farm sector from 2011 have stimulated an ongoing process of structural transformation, in which labor is moving from agriculture to the more productive urban industrial and service sectors. Resultant rural labor shortages and increases in real wage rates have been major drivers of mechanization in agricultural sector, particularly from 2013 onwards. The declining real price of some types of machinery has contributed to the acceleration of this process. The increasing availability of financial services following reforms post-2011 is also likely to have accelerated the adoption of large-scale agricultural machinery, particularly from 2013 onwards. The rise of rental markets, especially for large-scale equipment (combine harvesters and four-wheel tractors), has further improved access to these machines for farmers with small and large landholdings alike."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Michigan State University (MSU)-Food Security Policy Project Research Highlights Myanmar
2017-09-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-03-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 794.05 KB
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Description: "This research highlight is the first in a series of publications designed to summarize and rapidly disseminate key research findings generated by the Food Security Policy Project (FSP) in Myanmar 1. FSP aims to promote inclusive agricultural growth by facilitating improvements in the policy environment. Addressing critical evidence gaps by generating and distributing new knowledge on agri-food value chains and the rural economy is central to this effort..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Michigan State University (MSU) Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy
2016-09-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-03-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 3.09 MB
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Description: Research Paper 52 May 2017 Food Security Policy Project (FSPP)...."Fish farming (aquaculture) has grown rapidly in Myanmar ove r the last two decades and plays an increasingly important role in national fish supply, but its technical and economic characteristics have been poorly studied. This report addresses this knowledge gap by presenting data from the first statistically repre sentative survey of fish farms conducted in Myanmar - t he Myanmar Aquaculture- Agriculture Survey (MAAS) . MAAS was implemented in May 2016. A total of 242 fish farming households (151 growout farms and 73 nurseries) were interviewed in a ?cluster? of 25 village tracts as part of a larger survey that covered 1102 households in 40 village tracts in the main fish growing areas of Myanmar in Ayeyarwady and Yangon regi ons. As estimated from satellite images, the village tracts surveyed contained 57% of the total area of inland fish ponds in the Ayeyarwady Delta. Surveyed farms represent the entire population of fish farming households resident in these village tracts. Surv ey results provide a comprehensive ?benchmark? of the characteristics of inland aquaculture in Myanmar. Features analyzed include: farm productivity and profitability; farm size; production cycle duration; use of feed, seed and other production inputs; demand for labor; harvesting and marketing behaviors; technological change; the economic and social characteristics of fish farming households; and land access and tenure. The following results stand out:..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Michigan State University (MSU) Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy
2017-05-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-03-02
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 1.06 MB
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Description: "... Food Security Policy Project Components: • Value chains and livelihoods research • Mon State rural livelihoods and economy survey • Fish value chain • Other product and input value chains assessments • Policy Advising (e.g. Mon State Rural Development Strategy) • Training and Outreach..."
Creator/author: Ben Belton, Aung Hein, Kyan Htoo, Seng Kham, Paul Dorosh, Emily Schmidt
Source/publisher: Myanmar Development Resource Institute (MDRI)
2015-05-05
Date of entry/update: 2016-04-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 3.55 MB
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Description: "Rapid growth in Myanmar?s fish farming industry is supporting higher rural incomes, greater job opportunities, and improved nutrition, health and well-being, according to research by the Centre for Economic and Social Development (CESD), Michigan State University (MSU) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The research report, ?Aquaculture in transition: Value chain transformation, fish and food security in Myanmar”, was released to industry stakeholders and government representatives at a workshop in Yangon on 28 January 2016. In his opening remarks, Dr Duncan Boughton, Professor, International Development at Michigan State University, said good information and reliable data was vital for effective policy making. The CESD, MSU and IFPRI research provides data for the aquaculture (fish farming) industry that has not previously been available, and that differs from some of the conventional wisdom about Myanmar?s fish farming industry. The research will provide valuable input into policy discussions and the development of policy that supports and promotes a sustainable and equitable growth in the aquaculture industry. Presentations from the launch and workshop, a press release and a link to the findings of the aquaculture research are provided below. Launch and workshop for the ?Aquaculture in transition: Value chain transformation, fish and food security in Myanmar”, 9am ? 1pm, Thursday 28 January 2016, at Sedona Hotel, Yangon. Agenda (PDF; English version; 1 page; 135 Kb) Presentation 01: ?The status of aquaculture in Myanmar: A review of existing data”, by Kyan Htoo, Research Associate, CESD English version (PDF; English version; 23 pages; 966 Kb) Myanmar version (PDF; Myanmar version; 23 pages; 970 Kb) Presentation 02: ?The structure and performance of aquaculture value chains in Myanmar”, by Dr Ben Belton, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University English version (PDF; English version; 26 pages; 2,569 Kb) Myanmar version (PDF; Myanmar version; 25 pages; 2,748 Kb) Presentation 03: ?Policy options for inclusive aquaculture growth”, by Aung Hein, Research Associate, CESD English version (PDF; English version; 8 pages; 142 Kb) Myanmar version (PDF; Myanmar version; 8 pages; 166 Kb) Press release English version (PDF; English version; 3 pages; 736 Kb) (and copied below) Myanmar version (PDF; Myanmar version; 5 pages; 731 Kb) Aquaculture research paper and policy brief....."
Source/publisher: CESD - CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT (MYANMAR)
2016-01-28
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-30
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
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Description: Introduction: "Fish farming (aquaculture) is important to Myanmar?s food security and is developing and transforming quickly. This brief presents findings from a new field survey of the farmed fish value chain that is more detailed and broader than any previous study conducted in Myanmar. Many of our findings are at odds with what we perceive as conventional wisdom about fish farming in Myanmar. The findings have important policy implications to unlock the sector?s full growth potential and food security contributions."
Creator/author: Ben Belton, Aung Hein, Kyan Htoo, L. Seng Kham, Ulrike Nischan, Thomas Reardon, Duncan Boughton
Source/publisher: Center for Economic and Social Development (CESD), Michigan State University, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Livelihood and Food Security Trust Fund
2015-11-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-30
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 188.52 KB 273.1 KB
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Description: "Fish farming (aquaculture) is important to Myanmar?s food security and is developing and transforming quickly. This study presents findings from a new field survey of the farmed fish value chain that is more detailed and broader than any previous study conducted in Myanmar. Many of our findings are at odds with what we perceive as conventional wisdom about fish farming in Myanmar. The findings have important policy implications to unlock the sector?s full growth potential and food security contributions....Fish is important for domestic food security ? it is the leading purveyor of animal protein and the lead provider of micronutrients, important especially for child development, to Myanmar consumers. Fish is important in the food budget of households: nearly as much is spent on fish (14% of food expenditure) as on rice (19% of food expenditure). Fish farming also generates a lot of employment ? about twice as much per acre as paddy farming. Fishfarming accounts for about 20% of domestic fish consumption in Myanmar. This is a long way behind neighboring Thailand and Bangladesh (about 80% and 55%, respectively); farmed fish already accounted for about 20% of the fish consumed in both these countries by the late 1980?s....Even though it is a common perception that aquaculture output is mainly exported, in fact, roughly 20% is exported, and 80% goes to the domestic market. We anticipate that the export share will even decline further in the near to medium term as the Myanmar urban market grows...."
Creator/author: Ben Belton1, Aung Hein, Kyan Htoo, L. Seng Kham, Ulrike Nischan, Thomas Reardon, Duncan Boughton
Source/publisher: Michigan State University (MSU), Myanmar Development Resource Institute - Center for Economic and Social Development (MDRI-CESD), and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
2016-01-28
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-29
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 3.06 MB
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Description: Key Messages: • Significance of fisheries and aquaculture. Fish provide essential nutrition and income to an ever-growing number of people around the world, especially where other food and employment resources are limited. Many fishers and aquaculturists are poor and ill-prepared to adapt to change, making them vulnerable to impacts on fish resources. • Nature of the climate change threat. Fisheries and aquaculture are threatened by changes in temperature and, in freshwater ecosystems, precipitation. Storms may become more frequent and extreme, imperilling habitats, stocks, infrastructure and livelihoods. • The need to adapt to climate change. Greater climate variability and ncertainty complicate the task of identifying impact pathways and areas of vulnerability, requiring research to devise and pursue coping strategies and improve the adaptability of fishers and aquaculturists. • Strategies for coping with climate change. Fish can provide opportunities to adapt to climate change by, for example, integrating aquaculture and agriculture, which can help farmers cope with drought while boosting profits and household nutrition. Fisheries management must move from seeking to maximize yield to increasing adaptive capacity.
Source/publisher: World Fish Center
2014-05-08
Date of entry/update: 2014-05-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 746.92 KB
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Description: Abstract: "Fishermen depend on Lake Inle in Myanmar for their livelihood. However, the lake has been undergoing environmental degradation over the years. Adding to the long-term decrease in the catch because of this degradation, these fishermen faced extremely low water levels in 20 I 0, which they had previously not experienced. Based on field surveys, this paper aims to reveal how fishermen adapted and coped with the changing environment as well as the sudden shock of the abnormally low water levels"....Keywords: coping, adaptation, resource, fishermen
Creator/author: Ikuko Okamoto
Source/publisher: Institute for Developing Economies (IDE DISCUSSION PAPER No. 329
2012-03-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-05-25
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Source/publisher: State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) via The Burma Lawyers? Council
1990-04-25
Date of entry/update: 2010-12-09
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 82.32 KB
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Description: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... BACKGROUND TO THE MISSION: International mission team members; Myanmar fisheries sector... MYANMAR - MISSION REPORT ON INLAND AQUACULTURE AND FISHERIES: Myanmar - aquaculture and inland fisheries: Inland fisheries and aquaculture resources; The role of inland fisheries and aquaculture in people?s livelihoods in Myanmar; Participation in capture fisheries; Gender aspects; Securing food; Fish consumption; Identifying the poor; Understanding peoples livelihoods... Leasable fisheries; Auction process, duration of lease and renewal; Fishery management; Thaung Tha Man - Mandalay; Mandalay town; South Mandalay; Inle Lake; Open fisheries and rice field resources: Enhancement of freshwater leasable fisheries/culture-based fisheries; Reservoirs; Freshwater aquaculture: Land use for aquaculture; Rice-fish culture; Pond aquaculture; Freshwater species cultured in Myanmar; Stocking and harvesting; Government hatcheries; Private hatcheries; Feeds and feeding... Marketing: Inle Lake fishery and marketing; Institutions and their roles; The role of the Department of Fisheries (DoF); The role of Myanmar Fisheries Federation (MFF)... Inland fisheries and aquaculture: conclusions and recommendations; Information and statistics and appropriate valuation of fisheries resources; Aquaculture and aquatic resources in rural development; Institutions, communications and networking; Research... MYANMAR - MISSION REPORT ON COASTAL AQUACULTURE: Myanmar - coastal aquaculture; Coastal aquaculture in Myanmar; Coastal habitats and resources; Brief history and status of coastal aquaculture... Sub-sector analysis: Shrimp farming; Crab farming; Marine and brackishwater fish culture (groupers and seabass); Other species; Role of coastal aquaculture in people?s livelihoods in Myanmar... Gender: Role of small-holder aquaculture? Income diversification... Resources management and environmental issues: Coastal mangrove forests; Coral reef resource systems; Other environmental management issues for aquaculture... Government policies, plans and institutions: Institutions; Land use planning and coastal management; Business investment in coastal aquaculture; Market trends and implications... Coastal aquaculture: conclusions and recommendations: Coastal communities; Environmental issues and resource sustainability; Aquaculture technology; Institutional support and capacity building; Aquatic animal disease control and health management; Business investment in coastal aquaculture; Market trends and implications; Coastal fisheries resources; Entry points for support in coastal aquaculture... ANNEX 1: MISSION ITINERARY; ANNEX 2: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MYANMAR LEASABLE FISHERIES; ANNEX 3: LIST OF PERSONS MET; ANNEX 4: READING AND REFERENCES.
Source/publisher: FAO
2003-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2010-09-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Source/publisher: FAO
2001-10-00
Date of entry/update: 2010-09-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: ABSTRACT: "This paper examines the impact of the recent shrimp export boom in Myanmar on the economic state of small-scale fishermen. Results indicate that there has been an active increase in shrimp fishing stimulated by expanding export demand. With this, the income of shrimp fishermen has increased dramatically in the past 10 years. However, future prospects appear gloomy due to the possibility of over exploitation of shrimp resources... Keywords: Fishery, Resources, Export JEL classification: N5, Q2
Creator/author: Ikuko Okamoto
Source/publisher: Institute of Developing Economies (IDE Discussion Paper 135)
2008-03-00
Date of entry/update: 2010-09-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: Abstract "This paper presents issues affecting the movement of rural labour in Myanmar, by examining the background, purpose and earned income of labourers migrating to fishing villages in southern Rakhine. A broad range of socioeconomic classes, from poor to rich, farmers to fishermen, is migrating from broader areas to specific labour-intensive fishing subsectors, such as anchovy fishing. These labourers are a mixed group of people whose motives lie either in supplementing their household income or accumulating capital for further expansion of their economic activities. The concentration of migrating labourers with different objectives in this particular unstable, unskilled employment opportunity suggests an insufficiently developed domestic labour market in rural Myanmar. There is a pressing need to create stable labour-intensive industries to meet this demand."
Creator/author: Ikuko Okamoto
Source/publisher: INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPING ECONOMIES (IDE), JETRO Discussion Paper 206
2009-07-00
Date of entry/update: 2009-09-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 576.69 KB
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Description: "Judging by the increase in landing volume, Myanmar fisheries is developing fast. Due to the amount of export earning fisheries sector have its role as one of the main contributors to the national GDP. Thus fisheries are recognized as an important economic sector for the country. The fisheries landing is significantly increasing in recent years. It is more than three times larger than that of 1990s. In 1990-91 the earning form fisheries export was only US$ 13 million. It has been significantly increased in 10 years to US$ 218 million in 2000-2001 and then US$ 250 million in 2001-2002. Thereby fisheries export is promoted and the landings are given priority for exporting. Due to the lack of proper reporting and recording system, it is difficult to clarify the actual domestic utilization of fisheries products in terms of food or non food..."
Creator/author: Khin Maung Soe
Source/publisher: Institute of Developing Economies (VRF paper 433)
2008-02-00
Date of entry/update: 2008-04-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: An account is given of activities implemented during the Technical Cooperation Programme project ?Reformulation and strengthening of fisheries statistics system? in Myanmar which included the following: 1) computer training for staff; 2) species guide for field enumerators and for training purposes; 3) frame survey of Yangon Division; 4) data collection and catch analysis on industrial fisheries (trawlers); 5) training on grouping and ranking programme; 6) species coding list for industrial landing forms; 7) a study tour to Mee Pya and Thi La War fishing villages; 8) a visit to Marine Resources Centre and Fish Landing Site; 9) assistance to national gear technologist and aquaculturist; 10) training on ?The collection of catch and effort statistics, and basic sampling theory?; and, 11) workshop on Fisheries Resources Management. CATCH COMPOSITION, DATA ANALYSIS, DATA COLLECTION, DATA PROCESSING, FISHERY DATA, MARINE FISHERIES, STATISTICAL METHODS. Fisheries production, Mathematical and statistical methods. Bangkok 1997
Creator/author: Dr Sann Aung (FAO National Expert/Fisheries Statistician)
Source/publisher: FAO (TCP/MYA/4553)
1998-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Creator/author: Charles L. Angell (FAO Shrimp Culture Environment Expert)
Source/publisher: FAO
1998-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: DEVELOPMENT PLANS, FISHERIES DEVELOPMENT, FOREIGN INVESTMENT, JOINT VENTURES, MARKETS, MYANMAR, PRAWNS AND SHRIMPS, PRODUCTION ECONOMICS, PROFITABILITY, SHELLFISH CULTURE, TAXES. Investment, finance and credit. Development economics and policies. Bangkok 1998 Aquaculture production
Creator/author: Basir Kunhimohamed, a.
Source/publisher: FAO
1999-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: Ranong is the second largest Burmese community in Thailand, where many migrants work in the fishing and its related industries. However, the community has been hit by an economic downturn in part caused by the loss of fishing concessions from Burma.
Creator/author: John S. Moncrief/Ranong, Thailand, Kawthaung, Burma
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy", Vol. 9. No. 2
2001-02-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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