Shrimp culture in some areas of Paikgacha and its socio-economic implications

Abstract

Shrimp sector creates a huge employment sector and it is one of the vital foreign currency earning commodities of our country. However, it has an immense bad impact too. The government, policy makers and shrimp traders are encouraging shrimp culture without considering the social, environmental, cultural, political and many other pessimistic impacts of it. Some researchers and journal reports show the negative impact of unplanned shrimp culture on cropland and biodiversity. Shrimp culture has created environmental hazards, i.e. loss of biodiversity, loss of soil fertility of land, decrease of forestry such as homestead forest, agro-forest, deplete of horticulture, decrease of poultry and livestock and many other adverse effects on nature. These bad impacts are obviously affecting the social life, as environment and social lives are interwoven. Moreover, unplanned shrimp culture is creating critical situation in the shrimp culture area, which is a warning for the whole country. For example, though shrimp culture is economically profitable for the big farmers, it is increasing landlessness fellow and women are losing their jobs too. It results occupational, cultural, power structural and other changes. This sector demands comparative study in the coastal region. The limited idea and information about the socio-economic and many other impacts of shrimp culture making the issue more critical. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the problems and study in the grass root level. However, there has been a very few study in this context. Therefore, at present it is very rational to select the problems as an area of study.