Background - August 22, 2007
While farmed shrimp may make your Chinese takeaway a little more affordable, the costs have proved devastating for the people who live near shrimp farms. Delicate transitional zones from sea to dry land, mangrove forests are the nesting grounds of countless marine species including, fish, crustaceans and many mammals like monkeys, sloths, jaguars and raccoons.
Greenpeace & locals replant mangroves that had been cut for shrimp farming.
Traditional communities have depended on the mangrove forests
forsubsistence. Women gather shellfish, mussels, crabs and other
speciesto feed their families and to sell in local markets.
However, due tothe rapid and destructive growth of the shrimp
industry, thetraditional fishing grounds for local communities have
disappeared.
In Asia and Latin America, there has been a groundswell of
socialdiscontent about the insurgence of shrimp farms. There have
beenviolent confrontations, instances of harassment and even murder
oflocal people who have attempted to defend their lives and
livelihoodsagainst the encroachment of shrimp farms.
Sometimes fierce competition erupts between peasant farmers
andentrepreneurial shrimp farmers for quality land and coastal
access.Traditional fishers are hard hit by the arrival of shrimp
farms.Alternatives for employment and food are few and far
between.
"I say to those who eat shrimp - and only the rich people
fromindustrialised countries eat shrimp - I say that they are
eating at thesame time the blood, sweat and livelihood of the poor
people of theThird World," said India's Shri Banke Behary Das,
member of thePeople's Alliance Against the Shrimp Industry.
The horrific effects of recent hurricanes and tsunamis also
indicatethat damaging natural environments can leave humans more
vulnerable tonatural disasters. For example, after the Indian
Ocean tsunami inDecember 2004, damage appeared to be much worse in
areas where thesenatural defences were destroyed or degraded by
shrimp farming andirresponsible coastal development for industry
and tourism.