Message from the Minister
SM Rezaul Karim
Minister of Fisheries and Livestock
Bangladesh has come a long way from being a chronically food-deficit country during 1970s. In the last 4 decades, even as its population has more than doubled, food production has kept pace with population growth. There are still important shortfalls in adequate nutrition, but overall, it is highly encouraging to say that Bangladesh has attained food self-sufficiency at an aggregate level, at least in terms of calorie availability under the successful leadership of Honorable Prime Minister Deshratna Sheikh Hasina.
As you know the vision of this ministry is to provide safe and secure animal protein for all. The mission is to meet the demand of animal protein by enhancing production, productivity and value addition of Fish and Livestock products. Fish and fisheries are one of the prime items in Bangladesh’s agricultural products. This sector plays a major role in Bangladesh as it is associated with many dimensions of thepoverty alleviation strategy as it provides food, livelihood, employment and income as well as foreign exchange to the country. The contribution to GDP is 3.57% and it also contributes to country export (1.24%) (DoF 2022). Prawn and shrimp farming is the second largest export industry (after garment) where 80% is exported (30036.18 Metric Ton) for a USD 347.55 Million value (DoF 2020). The total annual prawn and shrimp production in 2020-21 is 2,51,964 M. Tons of which 55.34% comes from aquaculture sector (DoF 2022). However, the production and export of shrimp and prawn is threatened due to climate change made factors including sever diseases, drugs and chemicals used, feed quality, water quality etc. This project will address the issue and suggest recommendations to analyze both climate change mitigation and adaptation of prawn farming in Bangladesh and thereby meet the theme “Sustainable development and climate change” consequences increase production and export of prawn and shrimp where they have demand. Hope, the project outcome will provide the important policy recommendations to improve the governance and that might be through introducing diseases resistant and climate resilient eco-friendly prawn production having international certification.
I am highly pleased to know that the start-up conference on Climate-friendly and climate-resilient prawn farming in Bangladesh ‘ECOPRAWN’ is going to be held at Khulna on 28th November and at Dhaka on 1st December 2022. This is an extremely important issue of discussion for the stakeholders, researchers, policy maker, development partners and entrepreneur. I believe this 2-day conference at Khulna and Dhaka will provide the opportunity for the stakeholders to strengthen the climate change mitigated prawn production in Bangladesh and will be highlighted at national and international levels through mass media.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to the ‘ECOPRAWN’ research project team members from Bangladesh and counter-part Denmark for planning and organizing such an important start-up conference, which has national as well as global relevance and interest. l firmly believe that the further discussion of this start-up conference will be effective for the development of fishery sector in Bangladesh. Participants and PhD students will able to contribute sufficiently in this sector as well.
I wish a great success of the conference.
Joy Bangla, Joy Bangabandhu
May Bangladesh stay Forever.
Message from the Ecoprawn Coordinator
Max Nielsen
Associate Professor
Food and Resource Economics
University of Copenhagen, Denmark,
Project Coordinator, Ecoprawn
Climate-friendly and climate-resilient prawn farming in Bangladesh shortly named as ECOPRAWN is a 5-year duration multidisciplinary DANIDA funded research project collaborated among PSTU, BAU, and University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The project funds eight PhD students.
The research activity is broken down into four work packages, each with two PhD students cooperating with their supervisors and researchers in Bangladesh and Denmark. Work package 1 deals with analyzing GHG (CO2 and methane) emissions in prawn ponds, work package 2 deals with alleviating seawater-induced prawn diseases, work package 3 with techniques for measuring economic viability and efficiency, while work package 4 deals with options of implementing greenhouse gas emissions reduction pushed by governance of value chains.
The project started with an agreement between PSTU/BAU and University of Copenhagen. Meanwhile, several online meetings were conducted among partners of the three universities. Eight PhD students, two from each work package, have been selected from a bunch of good candidates, who were invited through newspapers, the Ecoprawn website and websites of the universities. The candidates were interviewed by a board consisting of experts from the Bangladeshi and European universities.
All expenses related to their PhD research are covered by the ECOPRAWN project, including travel expenses, accommodation, and tuition fee in Denmark. They will be enrolled in the double degree program and have to stay at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark for nine months for attending courses and achieving supervision. During their stay in Denmark, they will receive a monthly allowance.
In the last week of November, all domestic and foreign partners along with the PhD students will physically visit the prawn farms, hatcheries, processing factories and the input providers in Khulna and Satkhira areas. The researchers and their students will plan for setting-up their experiment of prawn farming introducing IMTA and application of probiotics. A start-up conference will be held in Dhaka 1 December 2022. The aim of the conference is to disseminate the project activities, sharing the ideas with the stakeholders, policy makers and related scientists, industrialists and other professionals.
I would like to convey my thanks to the country coordinator, package leaders, project partners of both Bangladesh and Europe, other stakeholders and the PhD students for making the project a successful event.
I wish the ecoprawn project a grand success.
Max Nielsen
November 15, 2022
Message from the Ecoprawn Country Coordinator
Professor
Dept. of Economics and Sociology
Patuakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh
Country Coordinator, Ecoprawn
The project entitled ‘Climate-friendly and climate-resilient prawn farming in Bangladesh (ECOPRAWN)’ is funded by DANIDA, Denmark and collaborated among PSTU, BAU and University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The aim of the project is at mitigating and adapting prawn farming in Bangladesh to climate changes. The project management structure and research activity was divided into 4 work packages (WPs). Methods for analyzing GHG (CO2 and methane) emission in prawn ponds, method of alleviating seawater-induced prawn diseases, techniques for measuring economic feasibility and efficiency and option of implementing greenhouse gas emissions reduction pushed by governance of value chains will be studied in WP1, WP2, WP3 and Wp4 respectively.
Officially the project started functioning from 1 April 2022. In total 8 PhD students, 2 from each work package have been selected for the double degree program to be awarded both from UCPH and Bangladeshi Universities through a rigorous interview consisting of members from UC, PSTU and BAU.
All the project members including PhD students will visit the prawn farms located at Khula, Satkhira and Bagerhat to gather practical knowledge and challenges faced by the prawn farmers during 27th November to 1st December 2022. The prawn hatcheries, processing centers, traders, importer and researchers of this field and other stakeholders will also be visited. We have a plan to organize a start-up conference on 1st December, 2022 in presence of the eminent scientists from Universities, Department of Fisheries, Designators of BFRI, World Fish etc. The project partners will share their views and practical experiences with the experts, policy makers, academician, advisors, practitioners, researchers and farmers engaged in the this field over there during the conference.
I expect that the inputs from the experts and stakeholders will be taken into consideration while conducting the research in different work packages and preparing the PhD dissertations of the students. The major output of this project is to publish scientific paper in international refereed journals by PhD students and researchers.. A big database on Ecoprawn from different dimension will also be an outcome of this project, which might be used for further researches in future. The project will definitely contribute for capacity building of the faculty members and researchers of both PSTU and BAU by organizing a number of courses, training, and seminars related to this topic.
Certainly, the research outputs on GHG emission, salinity intrusion, probiotic introduction, IMTA adaption and farm economics of prawn aquaculture would contribute to the improvement of food and nutritional security and economic development of Bangladesh. I hope, the ‘Policy Notes’ from Ecoprawn project will highly be considered in formulating future aquaculture policies of Bangladesh.
Finally, I am highly thankful to all the project members from PSTU, BAU, UCPH and other organizations for their contributions towards a good start of the Ecoprawn project. Again, I wish to strengthen the on-going collaboration under such suitable new project addressing the emerging issues prioritized for both European University and Bangladeshi partners.
I wish the Ecoprawn project a grand success.
Professor Badiuzzaman
Country Coordinator, Ecoprawn