Poverty Alleviation, Empowerment, and Sustainable Resource Use: Experiments in Inland Fisheries Management in Bangladesh

Complex linkages between environmental resource degradation and powerlessness, especially as they relate to common property resources in developing countries, argue for operational approaches to sustainable development grounded in poverty alleviation, empowerment, and intergenerational equity. Since government policies provide the context within which resources are accessed, allocated, and used, they play a crucial role in promoting or obstructing the process. 142This chapter reviews Bangladesh’s policy experiments in managing its vast inland fisheries. It focuses on an action-research project with the government in support of a policy attempting to simultaneously promote social equity, poverty alleviation, and sustainable use of fishery resources. It discusses lessons learned, and new approaches taken as a result, and notes continuing challenges.