A tale of two deltas - Unpacking the aquaculture-salinity interface in the Kaveri and Mekong Delta

Abstract

Brackish water shrimp aquaculture is a major commercial practice in the Kaveri Delta, India and the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Various bodies of literature, however, report environmental and social sustainability concerns revolving around salinity associated with shrimp aquaculture in the two deltas. There are existing efforts to manage these sustainability problems in the two deltas, but these efforts often fall short, which suggests that approaches for managing environmental and social problems associated with brackish water shrimp aquaculture need rethinking. This study aims to provide the first step toward rethinking aquaculture and delta management, by learning from ‘ground level realities’ and understanding how professionals at the policy level translate these ground level realities into policy and planning, in symmetry. To unpack how knowledges are constructed in aquaculture and delta management in the two deltas, a qualitative study was conducted, inspired by Actor-Network Theory and rooted in a process of co-creation with co-researchers in India and Vietnam. This involved studying how actors that work on aquaculture/delta management, at various levels of governance, understand and frame salinity, by historicizing aquaculture developments in the two deltas and analyzing six sub-cases which highlight key controversies revolving around salinity.

The results of this study firstly indicate that, historically, the desire to promote shrimp aquaculture has been a manifestation of a global policy push and business interests and that these business interests continue to shape aquaculture, delta management and elite framings of salinity. The analysis of the sub-cases shows that in professionals’ framings of salinity, the diverse salinity realities of other actors are reduced into one particular form of salinity, often expressed as a single line on a map or a single ‘problematic’ concentration of salt. This suggests that policy level framings of salinity in both deltas are reductive and do not sufficiently reflect the diversity of salinity understandings and framings of actors at the ground level. The reduction of the diverse salinity realities into one dominant narrative facilitates and legitimizes the development of brackish water aquaculture and hydraulic structures, which conflicts with the interests of many actors at the ground level and can feed into inequities. This suggests that specific knowledge systems at the policy level shape aquaculture/delta management in the two deltas and render it technical and apolitical. This thesis therefore concludes with the recommendation for future practitioners to be more open-minded, modest, reflexive and embrace interdisciplinarity in rethinking the management of associated sustainability problems.