World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 7

World Food Policy

Considering the high dependency of
livelihood outcomes on fishing, the good
nutritious value of fish (Kawarazuka
and Béné 2010), and the fact that
fishers often consume the fish they have
caught (Ahmed et al. 1999; Gomna and
Rana 2007) it appears to be clear that
a reduction in fish stocks will have a
negative impact on households’ food
security. Still, so far the potential impact
has not been quantified (Pukinskis
and Geheb 2012). Furthermore, not all
households will be affected in a similar
way. While fishing for cash income and
household consumption is pursued
equally across all socioeconomic
groups in the lower Mekong river basin
(Garaway 2005), declining fish stocks
may have different effects on individual
household’s diets depending on their
socioeconomic status and the portfolio
of their livelihood activities, especially if
they are fishers. The importance of fish
for nutrition in the overall population
undeniable (Bezerra da Costa, Dinyz de
Melo, and Macedo Lopes 2014; Dey et al.
2005), and especially fishers are expected
to be relatively more affected by declining
fish stocks. However, this relationship has
also not been quantified yet.

More affluent fishing households
have got resources such as human capital,
cash income, and physical assets to shift
their income earning and subsistence
activities away from fishing when fish
stocks decline, for example, by investing
in irrigation systems or aquaculture
(Bush 2004). By investing in new sources

of income, these affluent households can
hence adapt to the new situation and
replace foregone income from fishing.
Meanwhile, poorer2 fishing households
may simply not have enough income and
assets to invest and adapt, leaving them
exposed to the losses of fishing income.
Furthermore, Nguyen et al. (2015) show
for Cambodia that richer households
extract absolutely more natural resources
than poorer households. Yet, the share
of natural resource extraction in total
income is higher in poorer households
than in richer ones, making the poor
households more dependent on natural
resources. As a large share of the natural
resource income in Cambodia originates
from fishing, it implies that poorer
households depend more on fishing in
terms of income than more affluent ones.
When these households depend more on
fishing income and have less resources
to adopt new income sources, their
food security could be more affected by
declining fish stocks than that of betteroff households.

Additionally, even though fishing
takes place across all socioeconomic
groups, fish may be overall more
important in the diet of poorer fishing
households as they have got less access to
other sources of animal protein than richer
households (Kawarazuka and Béné 2010).
Households which earn their living from
subsistence activities, such as agriculture
and fishing, may face greater difficulty
in shifting to other sources of animal
protein in their diets than households

2

With the term “poor” we do not refer to households which are absolutely poor as defined by a cut-off
point but we mean households that are less affluent than others according to the distribution of incomes, that is, the lowest income quartile.

7