St Martin's facing food security risk: Study
Environmental degradation caused by rapid population growth is leading to food security risks in the St Martin's Island, according to a recent study.
Overexploitation of fish and fisheries resources, unplanned and unregulated tourism, reduction and degradation of agricultural land, increasing settlements and infrastructures, and poor communication with mainland are identified as prime causes directly or indirectly affecting the food security.
Other factors include loss of sand dune vegetations for fuel wood and fodder collection, expansion of infrastructures, indiscriminate and uncontrolled exploitation of corals and shells and pollution by dumping of wastes by tourists and boat discharges, said the study.
The National Food Policy Capacity Strengthening Programme (NFPCSP) with financial support from Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), European Union (EU) and USAID conducted the study titled ''Effects of environmental degradation on food security in the St Martin's Island of Bangladesh''.
Principal Investigator Mohammed Mostafa Feeroz of Zoology Department of Jahangirnagar University carried out the study from October 2007 to September 2008 with the aim to address the food security issues.
During the 12-month study, a total of 12 field trips were conducted in St Martin's Island and three in the Shahpari's Island (south-eastern tip of the country) of Teknaf.
A total of 95 households in St Martin and 49 in the Shahpari Island were interviewed. Both primary and secondary data were collected and used in this study.
The study identified the principal livelihood patterns of the local community as fishing, coral, shell and seaweed collection, fish drying, shop keeping, business and agricultural practices, coconut selling and providing tourism service.
Of these, fishing, fish drying, sale of coconuts and agricultural practices are the most common livelihoods for subsistence.
Fishing and businesses including shop keeping are the major sources of income among the others.
Other supplementary sources of income are coconut and dry fish selling, shell extraction, tourist van pulling, agricultural crops, hotel and motel services etc.
The study pinpointed that local food production and availability are further threatened for specific reasons.
It includes lack of institutional protection measures and unawareness about the status and functioning of critical ecosystems, limited opportunities for alternative sustainable livelihoods and limited public awareness of environmental issues.
The major findings are scarcity of biodiversity, depletion of fish and fisheries as it is a major source of livelihood to the local people, loss of local vegetation, used as fodder and fuel, and loss of agricultural land to infrastructures.
The factors also include salinity of the land and the non-availability of food to people in the market due to natural calamities such as storms, cyclones, high winds and sea level rise during the monsoon.
However, 70 percent of the respondents expressed their grave concern about the alarming reduction of fish and fisheries diversity and abundance nowadays.
Overexploitation to meet the increasing demand of rapidly increasing population of the island appears to be the main factor for the scarcity.
The study observed that during the last two decades, the population of the St Martin's Island has increased very rapidly, believed to be beyond the capacity of the island in immediate future.
Over the last decade (1996-2008), the population of the island has almost doubled.
The study recorded that around 30 percent of the land in the island are now available for agricultural crop production. The principal agricultural crops are rice, chilli, maize, onion, beans and watermelon.
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